


Wandering Suns

by Author376



Series: Acquaint the Flesh [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Female Jon Snow, Some characters are only mentioned - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 01:50:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14226483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Author376/pseuds/Author376
Summary: Westeros is filled with young men thrust into war too young. Here, they get a little more precious time to grow up and be shaped by events rather than blades...





	1. Theon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Madrigal_in_training](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madrigal_in_training/gifts).



> Once again, sorry for the delay in getting the next big story posted in the series, but the muses won't play nice. Also, a bazillion thanks to Madrigal_in_Training, without which none of this would have gotten written and who has been a profoundly helpful and tolerant sounding board as I fight with my story outlines. You can ask her: my story outlines are terrifying and arduous.
> 
> WARNINGS: Mentions of past torture and the severe injuries that result from it. Mentions of mental illness. Mentions of depression and the symptoms there of. Theon also does soul-searching and struggles with his memories of the Ironborn raids on the North and what that means his people do when they Reap.

**298 A.C. - Just after the turning of the year…**

The sun was rising red, painting the sky a bloody crimson in a warning that was driven deep into his bones even if he'd been stranded inland in Winterfell for most of his life. The weather was going to turn foul and he needed to turn his little boat towards shore. The question was what Theon Greyjoy was going to find when he got there. His last attempt hadn't been fruitful and silence had fallen between him and his passenger since.

"What happened to Pyke?"

"The castle thralls stuffed the crevices in the cliffs supporting the towers with wildfyre they got from that pyromancer, Mad Gordyn." A voice, low and rasping, and barely audible over the wind and lap of the waves replied. "It burned for three days, then our forefathers' keep crumbled down into the sea; the very stone akin to charcoal and chalk. Only the burned rocks remain, like stumps of rotted teeth."

Victarion Greyjoy was still a tall man and his shoulders broad, but he'd long since ceased to be strong. Muscle and flesh had wasted away from him, leaving his once powerful frame a skeleton strung together with pale scraps of leather. He was covered in filth matted with old scabs from lash marks and the burns made by hot brands on every surface.

"You've grown poetic, Uncle." Theon tried to tease, tried to say anything that might show him some hint of the once great warrior he'd known in the wreck before him.

"They left me my tongue, if little else."

Theon had to turn away then, fighting with his bile. He refused to vomit because of his uncle in front of his uncle. He'd already done it once, when he'd realized who the pitiful creature he'd been moved to save was, and he wasn't doing it again. Just because Victarion didn't have eyes anymore didn't mean the man wouldn't know. He could give his uncle that much dignity, at least.

"How'd you come to be here? Not to find me, Theon, but to leave the North. Eddard Stark wouldn't have let you go against his King's orders."

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell his uncle all of it. He desperately wanted to talk, but something held him back. Perhaps it was kindness towards his uncle, who needn't hear that all of his earlier ramblings about House Greyjoy's revenge would never come to be. Perhaps it was love for Robb, who'd proved a better brother than his own ever had in the memories he had of them. Of all of those it was most likely just shock that stilled Theon's tongue.

"Does it matter? I escaped the North and I came to get you valiantly in a fine ship, killing your captors and freeing you from bondage."

"A fine ship?" For the first time the ghost of a smile peeked out of the white and black hairs of Victarion's matted beard. "This little thing? It's a fisher's boat from the Riverlanders."

"I got it to Pyke, didn't I?" Theon asked, nettled.

He'd never tell anyone how hard it had been, or how little he'd known anything of sailing or the sea. Master Luwin had kept up his lessons in sailing by the stars. He could navigate easily anywhere in the world and he had maps burned into leather that Robb had given him, but actually sailing? Theon recalled all of his childhood lessons and knew all he could read of it, but that was different than a lifetime at sea. He'd had to waste days in a little inlet hidden along the Riverland's coast under Seagard just learning not to capsize the thing and how to control the sail and turn it. All, moreover, while being more than a little afraid that he'd be caught with the stolen vessel.

Then he'd still nearly swamped it more times than he cared to count at sea. It had made the staticky spikes of feeling he had about the boat even worse. On one hand, he'd found he loved the little sailing vessel. It was only four times his own height in length, but it gave him a feeling of freedom like he'd never known in his life. On the other, his mind raced back to the tumbledown shack at the edge of the fishing village where the boat's owner had probably lived. He'd met smallfolk fishermen in the North and they'd treated him well. His stomach had been twisted into a knot by their slaughter at the hands of his own people.

Was stealing some old man's only source of livelihood any better than murdering him in his bed? Theon had never felt more Ironborn. He didn't know if he liked it.

"You did." Victarion sounded so proud and his sunken lids crinkled at the corners, barely visible through the filth and Theon's heart broke into yet smaller pieces. This was his quiet, fair, unconquerable uncle. "You did. They put a bow into your hands in the North, not steel?"

"Yes, but it has its uses. I got your axe back for you."

"Little good it will do me, but I thank you. Wield it against our enemies."

Theon didn't know what to say to that. When he'd sailed to the Isle of Pyke he'd been left to look up in frozen horror at the crumbled and glassy remains of what had once been a terrifying and imposing keep. Theon recalled that it had also been damp and cold and drafty. It had none of the sense of security and warmth Winterfell did, and few of the luxuries. It had still been where he'd hoped to one day rule as lord. It had been his inheritance and his legacy.

Now it was naught but ruins. Theon had sailed through them, staring in shock, and then had to dodge the rocks and towers of crumbled stone as he made his way to Lordsport. It had been a harrowing journey and its end had been no better.

Theon had found out in Seagard that during the Plague merchants had stopped going to the Iron Islands. They'd never started again. While that explained the lack of news it also worried him. The land was bad on the Iron Islands, but not so much so that starvation was a constant threat naturally. Since arriving North Theon had actually worked out the real culprit one day with Lyarra and Robb and a great deal of math. The results had left him unsettled and worried about the true meaning of prosperity and his own people's lack of it, as well as the obvious dangers underlining the reality.

Thralls were not peasants. They were not smallfolk. They didn't have any of the limited rights of the smallfolk. They didn't keep the same share of their work the smallfolk did. They weren't treated like smallfolk. After all, they were thralls, how many times had Theon heard jokes about how they were meant to be abused?

The thing about thralls, due to the abuse and frequent mutilation they suffered, was that they didn't multiply. Thralls dwindled in numbers as the years went on rather than increasing, so it made frequent raids important. As raiding for thralls along the coasts of Westeros has been nearly impossible since Aegon's Conquest, that meant hitting the Summer Isles, Stepstones, or slave ships moving around the coast of Essos.

Such long distance, such punishing treatment, and other factors like the shock of the climate change between the tropics and the northwestern coast of the Sunset Sea meant that thralls had a pitiful lifespan. There just were never that many working the fields that did exist on the Iron Islands. Theon had never really thought about it until his lessons in lordship began in earnest and he and Robb and Lyarra had done the math.

Now Theon was looking at the end result of thralldom and the taking of salt wives. The Greyplague had ripped through his home and killed two thirds of the thralls. It had killed even more of the Ironmen themselves, as they were clustered around ports and castles and the heavier population centers were always hit hardest by such plagues. Those thralls that had lived had looked at the affliction racing through their masters and risen up against them in the midst of plague, starvation, and chaos.

Theon's sister and father had contracted the plague and died as stone effigies of themselves within days of each other. Victarion had been in Essos at the time, raiding the Stepstones and hearing only whisperings of plague that had led him to making a long journey at sea, out of sight of the shore, and sacrificing slaves to the Drowned God in the hopes of preventing the disease from affecting the Iron Islands. He'd have done better, Theon thought, to free his stolen slaves and beg mercy from Doran Martell.

That hadn't happened. Instead Victarion had come back to find too many of the lords of the islands had all died in too short a time. Heirs and ladies died as well. Salt wives turned on their husbands with punishing swiftness, sneaking down to open castle gates to yet more thralls, who poured in to massacre the Ironborn who'd lorded over them. Those who could, fled, both the furious thralls and the plague. Since the mainland wouldn't have them and the thralls were putting torch to every ship at anchor, though, there was nothing to do but sail for the little uninhabited scraps of rock found around the coastline farther north or further south and pray the Drowned God was listening.

Theon's fingers snaked up to the warm, sharp-edged lump underneath his tunic and boiled leathers. The dragonglass arrowhead hung where it now always did, and he felt again a hint of foreboding and hope all tangled together. The Drowned God hadn't listened to anyone's prayers, as far as Theon could tell. It certainly hadn't helped his uncle. Crossing the sea in his tiny boat, barely able to sail it, he'd been desperate enough to pray to the sea itself, changeful wench that she was, and to the Old Gods of the Starks.

The Sea had calmed. The storm had cleared. Was it only the Starks' Gods who listened anymore?

"Theon."

"Yes, Uncle?" Theon shook the dottle out of his head and immediately turned to Victarion. "Did you need more water?"

"Don't waste it on me, boy."

"I've got enough." Theon had made sure to stock clean water before he left the ruins of Botley's keep where he'd found his uncle.

"It would still be wasted." The man rasped and turned his face towards Theon.

It was an ugly sight. His nose was a smashed and twisted mess. His teeth were gone, or smashed, and his lips mangled. His matted and filthy beard covered whatever other scars were present on his face, but the rest of his body was a wreck.

When the thralls had taken Victarion captive they'd given him over to a group of salt wives who'd taken over House Boltley's small square keep. The results were now what Theon could see as almost predictable. He'd been raised with his father and his uncles' words that the taking of salt wives was honorable, and that their lot in life was nothing to complain over. After all, they were being kept by real men, were they not? They were seized like any other loot. Now, however, the disemboweled and violated body of the girl he'd lain with in that Northern village haunted him.

The women had taken hammers to Victarion's feet, ankles, and knees and then strung him up between two posts by heavy ropes bound around his wrists. Eventually the lack of blood circulation to his hands had left them withered, gray, and useless. How he'd not died of greenrot, Theon didn't know.

He'd been left mostly naked, and just hung there for an amount of time that Victarion couldn't guess at and Theon didn't want to. He had only a ragged shawl tied around his hips. Theon was shamefully glad of that. They'd gouged out his uncle's eyes and cut off his ears. If they'd gone farther than that, he didn't want to know.

"You want to die."

"Give me back to our God, Theon, and pray for vengeance with me." Victarion's crackled voice sounded almost relieved. "Then get your mother. I heard the cursed thrall lord on Harlaw's kept her alive from the bedamned harpies that had me."

Theon felt a sudden jolt of horror. He wanted desperately to just turn the boat south again. He was supposed to be going to Dorne. He'd told Robb he'd go overland, hide as a sellsword, and head straight for Dorne and Lyarra. If he was caught it could mean Robb would lose his head, though he knew that very unlikely. It would certainly mean his honor and standing were affected and his future rule could be strained.

He'd had to know, though, and he found that same need driving him towards Harlaw. Even if his mother was as shattered as his uncle, Theon still needed to know. So with shaking hands he helped his uncle stand. The sealskin cloak he'd wrapped his uncle in when he'd taken him back after putting arrows through the sleeping women who'd surrounded him in the otherwise empty great hall at Lordsport started falling away, but Theon tightened it around his uncle's shoulders needlessly.

"I won't need it in the Drowned God's Hall."

"I won't have you going to our God in rags, either."

Victarion accepted it and pinned the cloak in place with his wrists, staggering forward and rocking the boat fit to capsize it. Then Theon felt his uncle's weight shift and automatically leaned his own back. Victarion Greyjoy toppled over into the light waves, entering the sea with a splash. He sank and Theon watched awkwardly, turning and stumbling to sit at the rudder again, causing the little boat to list and bob as he grappled with the rigging to sort it out again.

Theon watched as, a little while later, the first blood relative he'd seen since he was nine years old, bobbed to the surface again. Victarion Greyjoy was face down in the waters. The gray, mottled sealskin cloak turned to gleaming crimson under the rising sun. Theon turned his face to the rocky coast of Harlaw isle in the distance and breathed out, trying to focus on getting his little boat there and what in all of the Seven Hells Lady Stark feared he was going to do when he got there.

 

 

* * *

 

A fortnight later, Ten Towers was perfectly intact behind Theon as he sailed away from it. Lord Lyll Farmer was no lord and had carried no surname until the plague stoked the fires of a thrall rebellion. The commoner had been snatched from the Reach as a lad during Robert's Rebellion and he was going to do his damndest to recreate the Arbor in some form on Harlaw Isle. That included the laws.

Theon should have been angry, but he'd just been relieved to find the island at some form of peace. It meant that he could restock his stores with some of the money he had from selling the Northern horse he'd been riding on before stealing the boat. He'd discovered a talent for fishing, but he needed bread and hard cheese and other supplies. Fresh water was, at least, usually free from port wells.

Now every settlement on Harlaw had a wall around it. Yes, those walls were usually earthen works and rough-piled stone, but they were better than nothing. Every thrall-turned-peasant was cautious and wary. It was still nothing like the chaos, murder, and starvation he'd found on Pyke. Instead it was just an island filled with peasants, a newly uplifted smallfolk lord, and levies of thrall soldiers with stolen weapons defending the new status quo.

Theon had been able to land and claim he'd been blown out to sea from the Riverlands coast. There'd been enough reaving over enough time that his features were no more or less Ironborn than a lot of people along the Sunset Sea. Thanks to Lady Stark he could fake a Riverlands accent as well as a Northern one, and with his weapons all hidden and his roughest clothes on he'd passed well enough as a fisherman. Being from the mainland was enough to get him brought before Lord Lyll, however.

The man was small and lean with quick brown eyes and an energetic mean. He was also friendly, outgoing, and Theon wasn't stupid enough to think that he'd live to breath another second if he was believed to be who he actually was. Just because the man wanted to claim the isle as his own and make it into a bit of Reach in the Iron Islands didn't mean he'd gotten where he was by being stupid. He'd had Theon's maternal uncle and the loyal members of his household murdered down to the last child when he'd led the thrall revolt on Harlaw.

Thankfully Theon hadn't had to do anything. He'd maintained he was a fisherman and lost. Lord Lyll, it turned out, most wanted trade and acknowledgement from lords in the Riverlands. He couldn't risk his own fishing boats being seized if he sent them to shore; he needed the food too badly. Plus, his own people didn't want contact. At the moment the rest of the thralls were still giddy with their success at overthrowing the Ironborn and taking the island during the worst of the Greyplague's rampage. They felt that anyone intervening would make things worse for them.

In hopes of securing the acknowledgement he craved from the highborn he'd sent Theon back to shore with a message meant to make its way to Lord Hoster Tully and, from there, to the King. It offered fealty in return for keeping Harlaw and promised that the days of reaving and Ironborn culture were over once and for all. It hinted that, with a force of men and help from the Royal Navy, Lyll could hold all of the Iron Islands for the King.

Having seen the bloody hell of anarchy and chaos that Pyke was, Theon silently hoped the man had fun with his delusions of grandeur. Each petty chieftain that had cropped up among the thralls would be out to kill anyone who threatened his hold, and the larger mass of the thralls were likely rudderless and ready to attack at random. Theon chafed underneath his humble behavior in front of Lyll, but a sense of self preservation and a realization of his luck kept him from breaking character when he realized that Lyll was sending proof along with his message.

Proof, in this case, was a thin woman in a worn and ragged dress that had once been very fine. A woman whose hair was an equal mix of sandy brown and gray and whose eyes were a familiar sea green. Thankfully Lord Lyll's eyesight was shot to hell and nobody really paid attention to this captive besides slipping her food, water, and keeping her locked in a room with nothing to harm herself in. They didn't see the resemblance as they handed Alannys Harlaw over to her last living child and Theon tucked his mother onto the boat, wished Lyll luck aloud, wished him to drown slowly in the silence of his mind, and pushed his little boat off of the shore again.

His mother had said nothing when she was taken out of her cell. She'd just stared off into space as she was led down from one tower to Ten Tower's Great Hall. She'd not even looked at Theon, staring instead everywhere else. Lyll hadn't acknowledged her, save apologizing for sending him off with an old 'Ironborn wench' whose mind was gone. Theon had quashed his temper and taken his mother, settling her in the ship. Now, with Harlaw out of sight and the long sail to the coast of the Westerlands (Theon was not going to the Riverlands, he was heading back South again) started, he was left nervously trying to think of what to say.

"I had three sons."

"Wh-what?"

Theon started as his mother spoke, her voice creaking like old, unoiled door hinges under the light of the softly rising, yellow sun.

"I had three sons. I don't know where they are." His mother rasped again, turning to look at him with eyes that were blank and sad. "I had a daughter, too, but she's gone to stone with her father. Where are my sons? Rodrik wouldn't leave me so and Maron brings me things from his voyages. He wouldn't forget his mother. Theon's little yet, he'll pine without me. He needs his mother. I tell Balon all the time. Theon needs his mother."

Theon shivered and swallowed, but saw the rudder locked and the rigging taken care of before inching forward to where his mother sat curled up underneath her thin cloak against the beam. Theon reached for his bedroll of furs and good blankets of Northern wool. He began to unroll it and wrap her up, and it wasn't until the warm weight settled over her thin, wasted shoulders that she looked up and seemed to see him.

"Who are you?" Alannys Harlaw demanded, then narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Brother - no, you're too young. I'm old. You cannot be old too. My brother would be older than you. Who are you?"

"Mother." Theon tried to say, but his throat closed on the word and only a choked sound came out.

Lyarra had pined for her mother, though she'd never even known the woman's name. He'd always brushed being separated from his off. He was a son. It was only right that he leave to join the world of men. He'd refused to show weakness by missing her. Suddenly, in that moment, everything about his life opened into a wound and Theon wasn't sure what he missed or what he didn't or what home had ever even been to him. It was just him and the wreck and ruin of the woman who'd birthed him stuck on a tiny ship with only the sea around them and this had to be what drowning actually felt like. How did the Drowned Gods' disciples come back from it with their minds intact?

"Theon?"

He lost control then, though he'd never speak of the weakness of it. Alannys let out a soft noise of surprise and in shaking, weak arms, Theon's mother enfolded him in an embrace far too strong for her twig-like limbs. He wept. He wasn't sure of the soft, tuneless singing against his ear was punishment or redemption.

 

* * *

 

 

Weeks later, Theon's vow to never take up reaving and to leave his past and its expectations behind took a serious hit in the Reach. He decided that it was merchants like Mikel Holly that had caused his people's habits. Surely nobody would blame him for running the bastard through or hacking him to pieces, taking his possessions, and then leaving for better shores. Hell, the man's wife would probably thank Theon, wherever the poor woman was. Maybe he'd offer to take her with him, if she was comely.

"Look, you either need a guard for your caravan who has eyes to see desert raiders before they set upon you or you don't." Theon stood his ground, refusing to be cowed. "Don't waste my time standing here when I can leave to find another party going the same way."

Mikel Holly squinted at Theon and he knew he could make the man's life easier by moving even one step to the side. The sun was at his back and he was standing in front of the broad window that stood in the tall wooden building that served as the headquarters for this particular teamsters' guild in Cuy. There were several such buildings in the city, though fewer than in Oldtown.

Theon had decided against going anywhere near Oldtown. It was the realm of the Seven and of Maesters and Theon wanted nothing to do with anyone who might possibly be learned enough to glance at his face and not see another child of rape produced by the Ironborn trying to make his way in the world with his poor mother to support. Better to go a little out of his way and keep his mother safer.

He'd nervously left his mother at their accommodations. The cheap inn was in no way fit for his mother. It wasn't fit for Theon, but he'd quickly learned not to take having a roof over your head for granted. After he'd collected his mother, he'd made for the Westerlands coast. While part of him felt a real, physical pain at leaving the little boat behind on which he'd relearned the will and way of the sea, Theon knew he couldn't keep it. His mother's cough had grown worse and he had to get her out of the cold and damp of the little open boat. If he'd had a real ship and a crew that would be different, but…

He wasn't the Lord of the Iron Islands. He wasn't lord of anything. He was currently son to no-one, his father no more than one more body turned to stone by the plague. He had Robb's honor and life to guard, his mother to take care of, and the only way to grasp at even a hint of the future he'd once yearned for was to get to Dorne. That meant using the skills he did have to parlay travel.

He sold his little boat, which he'd named Arya in the silence of his mind for being tiny and doughty, and he bought some supplies, a couple of rough but clean changes of clothing for his mother, and a pair of sturdy donkeys. One was for their gear, the other for his mother. Then he started walking south in search of a caravan to join as a guard.

Theon had learned a valuable lesson in retrospect there as well. During his time at Winterfell Lord Stark had provided him all that he needed. Clothes, horses, weapons, and even an allowance had been handed to him. Theon was now realizing what it had cost him to spend so long as a captive fosterling. He'd had no idea that the Riverlander he'd sold the Northern horse to had taken him on the deal, and he'd been left to awkwardly haggle over his fishing ship with a man in the Westerlands without being able to truly pinpoint its value. Had he known more of trade or commerce, had he bothered to know more of merchants and commoners or been taught of it, then Theon might have had money for a horse himself.

The first caravan that they had joined had treated both Theon and his mother well. That was pure good luck. With the Northern accent he'd assumed Theon had passed as a Northman from the Western coast. His mother he waved off as having spent too much time captive as a Salt Wife; she wasn't quite right now. Thankfully Alannys Harlaw might have kept forgetting how many children she had yet living, of her husband's death, and the overthrow of her very culture, but she retained enough of her sanity and her old pride to listen to Theon and absorb what he said. She played her part flawlessly as long as Theon could keep people from bothering her.

In the first caravan that had been no problem. He'd been accepted as a guard for a load of iron ore headed down the Ocean Road for Highgarden. Part of an agreed upon trade deal worked out by Lord Tywin himself, the merchant in charge of the process had been a hard, but honest man. His guards were likewise professionals who'd been guarding various types of ore, metal, and jewels out of the Westerlands mines for years.

Theon had almost enjoyed that part of the trip. His nightmares he attributed to the Ironborn raid he claimed had destroyed the village he and his mother had settled in. He could weave a tale about that easily enough out of the carnage that still haunted his dreams from the villages he and Robb and the others had visited. It wasn't even untrue since he had as many nightmares about being one of those murdered by reavers as he did about ending up a mutilated wreck like his uncle had at the hands of the salt wives.

The guards had happily picked up on Theon's lack of training in some areas and skills in others. They'd quickly seen through his facade as being only a village boy, and he'd spun a tale about his mother spending time as a favorite of a lord before the man's eyes had wandered to younger women and they'd been settled in a fishing village. They'd accepted it.

Theon soon found himself trained in ways that Ser Roderik hadn't taught him. Dirty fighting tricks abounded, and when they noticed that Theon's swordplay was good, but by no means great, he found his uncle's axe thrust into his hands and lessons in that… actually going well. He wasn't as big a man as Victarion, but weeks, and then moons, on the road all alone had hardened his body past even the point of training. Moreover, Theon finally found a group that appreciated his archery. If you killed brigands from a distance before they got to the caravan, then nobody had to get hurt fighting them.

"You're an archer, but are you any good?" The rat-faced little merchant stood in front of him, sweating in his silks and wiping a hand over a pasty brow and up underneath the floppy velvet hat that kept his bald head hidden. "Any man can carry bow and arrow, am I supposed to take on faith that you're worth the water tolls to bring across Dorne? Especially if you're bringing along some old woman who'll just slow us down. Not to mention the beasts. I won't pay water tolls on the beasts."

"I'm the best archer you've ever met." Theon replied, not bowing to the man's greedy disdain and stifling his temper before he put the sturdy Northern dagger in his boot that had been Smalljon's parting gift to him through the rat's throat. "And I don't have time for this."

The truth is, Theon had to have time for it. He needed to get to Sunspear. He'd intended to leave Highgarden and take the Prince's Pass with another company, but money had gotten short and the only caravan he'd found that would work was one headed to Cuy. He'd thought that maybe he could get on a ship from there, but then found the glut of sailors in Oldtown destroyed that hope. He'd never get hired, let alone be allowed to take his mother. His best bet was a caravan across the desert.

"I've known archers from the Summer Isles, boy."

"Good for you."

Theon kept walking away. He'd learned something of the most arrogant of merchants. They couldn't stand to be slighted. He'd met lords and even a prince with less arrogant world views than the sniveling tradesmen who he had to kiss up to now. Hopefully he hadn't miscalculated and turned away when he shouldn't have kissed up, but it was so damned hard to swallow his pride. He was a lord, or he should have been, and these…

"Wait!" Mikel Holly bit out, stepping forward and shaking his head. "Come then, we're on the edge of town anyway. Show me you can live up to your boast and I'll hire you on and pay for your way - though it'll mean less silver in your pocket at the end if I've got to water horses, you and your old woman. Water tolls from the beasts will come out of your pay!"

"Two small donkeys and myself and my mother. I'll draw a mount from the ones you set aside for your guard."

The rodent perked up at that as they stepped out into the sun, and muttered something favorable about donkeys. Theon had been told at the rundown inn that anyone running caravans in Dorne ran them with their own mounts. Horses and camels were always bought in Dorne to travel through Dorne. Most others either died or needed too much water to be cost effective. Donkeys, however, were universally light drinkers and good to forage in all but the most desolate of places. The hardscrabble mining donkeys that you got out of the Westerlands were particularly frugal creatures to own.

"Alright - what did you say your name was?"

"Ted." Theon went with the name he'd been using, finding it amusing to sort-of claim Lord Stark's name for his own in this great sham. "Ted of Forrester Land, near Three-Forks village."

"Alright, Ted." Holly sniffed in disdain and smirked in triumph. "See that tree? The oak at the end of the path with the split branch halfway up. Hit the heart shaped knot in the trunk."

There was indeed a fine shot, but not an impossible one by any means. Eighty paces away the tree stood at the edge of town. That said, Theon's bow wasn't weirwood, or anything so fine but it was a good ash bow made with his own two hands. Eighty paces he could do in his sleep, especially with a target bigger than his spread hand. It appeared his smug not-yet-employer was nearsighted.

Good.

The sound of the arrow hitting dead center was nearly as satisfying as the surprised look on the squinting asshole's face. Still, Mikel Holly just snorted and looked torn between being impressed and being sour. He chewed on his lip and looked around.

"See that fence post?" Theon decided to move things along. "The tenth one past the oak tree? I'll sink an arrow into the white line painted around it."

"The town limits?"

"Aye, if that's what it is."

"There's no way. You'd need to be a Marcher or a Summer Islander to hit that, and you've no bow taller than you are or made of goldenheart."

"You don't know the archers of the North."

"You hit that, I'll hire you at your asking price." The merchant finally allowed. "I can't even see it from here."

Theon felt the sun warm on his shoulders like the caress of a happy woman. He lifted his bow and knocked an arrow. The brush of the fletching against his lips was as sweet a kiss as he could ask for from any willing woman and he spared a slightly regretful thought for the abstinence he'd lived with since he went South. He had no coin for whores and he couldn't risk his mother by bedding down with someone else's wife. If he didn't take care of her, no-one would.

The sound of the arrow hitting was all it took to propel the curious merchant forward. He walked with a quick, mincing step. Theon strolled after him, satisfied, confident, and able to see that he'd hit his mark. The arrow was indeed sunk into the thin white stripe painted around the top of the fence post.

"You're hired." Holly nodded almost to himself, his infuriating, superior manner evaporating suddenly into the briskness of a man owned by money who'd made his mind up about an investment. "Be at the Red Flounder tomorrow at the Hour of the Nightingale. Go there tonight after sunset and talk to my brother, Garth Holly. He's leading the caravan you'll be guarding."

"Thank you." Theon felt that the man should be thanking him, but he'd learned to let such things go.

His temper and his attitude had cost him and his mother warm beds and meals on this trip. He'd had several fights he'd won or drawn even at, but he'd also ended up beaten black and blue once for his mouth. He'd never forget lying there in pain between Highgarden and Cuy, his mother throwing herself bodily over him the only thing that saved him from being kicked to death by the other mangy oafs who were guarding the small caravan they'd first left with. The master of the caravan had refused to let them steal their gear after the beating, but had left them and told them to find a different road.

They had, with Theon ending up curled up on the donkey his mother should have been riding for two days and two nights. Then another caravan had come there way and they'd joined that. Thankfully it had included a traveling Septon who apparently actually lived up to his vows. The man, who was always speaking in strained tones about the change in the smallfolk's faith, had been kind. He'd insisted on seeing them fed and paid Theon as another guard once Theon was well enough to actually fulfill that function. They'd split up when the road forked with Theon and his mother going to Cuy while the pious old man had ridden further to Oldtown.

Still, putting his temper away, Theon breathed out and concentrated on the fact that he'd achieved one more step in his goal of getting to Sunspear. Once he was there his lady mother would not be reduced to sleeping underneath wagons to keep off the rain at night. He didn't know what Lyarra would do, but surely she'd have some place in her household for him…

 

 

* * *

 

Despite everything, many days later saw them through sand and the stone of the Red Mountains, and yet more sand. Theon felt a sort of triumph in it. Then he felt bitter because survival had become a kind of triumph.

"How do you feel, Mother?"

"Oh, the warm sun is nice, isn't it?"

"Oh, very."

Theon was sunburned; fortunately not too badly. Unlike Robb, he at least tanned. As it was he was a little red around the ears and nose, but the thin cotton scarf draped all around his head and face kept most of it off. The rest of him was steadily shading towards a light bronze.

His mother, on the other hand, looked wonderful. It was as if the heat and rolling red sand revived something in her. Never having been off the Iron Islands herself, his mother had been entranced by how different Dorne looked. First it was the rocky beauty of the land around Starfall where they crossed the Torrentine. Now it was the red dunes around Sandstone. Either way, his mother's skin had darkened to the color of rich honey and her long salt-and-sand hair now gleamed in the neat braids encircling her head.

The relentless sun overhead was now at its zenith. Intelligent creatures, man or otherwise, were inside in the shade and taking an afternoon nap. Alannys Harlaw wouldn't have it. She'd had to get up and go out and poke around the tent city of merchants and traders that had sprung up around Sandstone for its thrice yearly traders fair. They hadn't enough coin to truly enjoy it, but she was entranced by the bright tents and pennants and Theon looked into her eyes, blue-green, present, and aware and couldn't say no. He was bored anyway.

Theon couldn't help thinking of how it was almost funny, in a twisted way, for him to be where he was. He knew House Qorgyle. Or, rather, he knew its second son. Less than a year before, he'd been a Lord Paramount's son and sparring with Ser Arron Qorgyle, Lord Qorgyle's brother, in Winterfell's training yard at at royal wedding. Now he was invisible; just one more low-level sellsword guard and his aged mother walking between tents without the coin to make a merchant care enough to try to impress them.

"I am beginning to see how the Iron Price was born." Theon thought to himself.

He'd first become aware that the Iron Islands were poor a few weeks after he begun to travel North as a boy captive. One took for granted that the Westerlands were rich, but as he went through castles and keeps in the Riverlands he began to notice that the Greenlanders had a different style of living. The smallfolk were neither starving nor clothed in rags. No, their clothing wasn't fine, but it was usually serviceable given their level of society. Starving people weren't common. There were no thralls, as Lord Stark had explained to him in his bewilderment during those first days in the Wolf Lord's custody in the Westerlands.

While castles like Pyke and Ten Towers were grand, they were grand fortresses. They were impressively hard to take and could resist capture. Even inside the finest rooms, however, they were usually drafty, cold, damp, and in many places, ill-maintained. The ironmongery was always good, yes, weapons were fine, and the lords and their ladies had fine clothing in Theon's memories, but over time he'd realized how little any of that represented actual wealth.

Wealth meant fields. Wealth meant forests. Wealth, Theon realized, began with food. The Reach had just underlined Theon's realization, because even in the Westerlands, where Lannister Gold kept everyone rich, there wasn't such a plethora of healthy, plump people as he saw at every stratum of society in the Reach.

Sitting on their barren bits of rock, scrambling for fish and fighting the Storm God's constant fury, was it any wonder that Theon's ancestors had wanted a piece of all of that prosperity? It couldn't be had by farming their own land, or not in any great way. So why not just take it?

"Mother?" Theon's attention drifted back down to the woman on his arm as she sighed.

"Nothing, dear, I was just wishing your brothers could see this. Feel it." Alannys' eyes turned misty, but she didn't shed a tear. Instead she wriggled her toes in the hot sand, her half-boots hanging from the fingers of her free hand as she added, nearly inaudible,"They're dead, you know."

Theon swallowed at that fragile, but direct gaze and realized that he hadn't heard her cough in days. He let a title he hadn't given anyone since before he'd become a hostage slip from his lips as he responded.

"I know, Mama."

Looking around she frowned and then turned back to him, her expression present and interested.

"I haven't really asked you where we're going, have I?"

She had, now and then, in her own way. It hadn't been very sensible. She'd grasped the need for secrecy, but kept couching it in terms of the past and events that had happened years before Theon was even grown. This direct question sent a cool chill and racing gooseflesh all over his skin, prickling where the loose, thin clothing one wore in Dorne should have kept the sun away entirely.

Theon was finding that the sun didn't obey the will of man, however. It wondered where it would. It came up and sank on its own time. You could depend on it.

"Let's go back to our tent." It wasn't really theirs, the small, stained canvas thing belonged to the merchant they would leave with on the morrow. "I'll tell you all about it there."

"Alright, Son." Alannys' smile was like sunset at sea, warm and a herald of stars rising to guide him home. "Tell me… when they took you to that place… did they treat you right?"

Theon swallowed heavily and, suddenly, he missed Robb so much it hurt.

"If you can trust the sun to rise, you can trust the honor of House Stark."

Theon had no idea where he was going after they followed the caravan to Hellholt. There were leagues and leagues of desert between the place where a dragon had fallen and where he knew Lyarra and a hope for some kind of stability and home worthy of the name rested. Still, with his mother's hand tucked against his arm like an anchor tethering him against a storm, it was like the hot sun on his back chased the storm that had left him tossed and confused and adrift away and now a safe harbor was in sight.


	2. Quentyn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prince Quentyn Martell had ONE job... he's a little afraid of telling his father he chose not to do it.

**298 A.C. - Not long after the turning of the year…**

The night was warm and the air was sweet as Quentyn stood upon a pink marble balcony and looked out over the colorful array of sails filling the harbor below Lys.

"Are you sure I cannot convince you to join me?"

Quentyn turned and faced Cletus Yronwood. He'd fostered at House Yronwood and his age-mate had squired with him. They were brothers in all but name, but had little in common in habits. Perhaps the only thing that was truly similar about them was being the sons of renowned fathers who were desperate to live up to their expectations. Either way, they were friends.

"I'd rather stay here."

"If you're sure, Your Grace." A laughing, warm, sweetly accented female voice responded from the doorway. "I do have a sister."

Quentyn flushed, but offered the lady a small smile and a shake of his head. He would have scowled and stuttered at her a few months before. Now he felt equal to just politely refusing the solicitations of the gorgeous Magister's daughter.

Laerylla was tall and slender with a tiny waist and small, high breasts. Her pale hair was just a shade too golden and her blue-violet eyes too dark to make her a visual match for Daenerys Targaryen, but the resemblance was there. Quentyn didn't want to embarrass himself with some hedonistic lady anyway, let alone lose his virginity to her and whatever other company she chose to invite into her bed in a pillow house. Her sister sounded much the same.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning!"

Quentyn rolled his eyes at his foster brother's cheerful farewell, then sighed. Looking down at the sweet wine in his goblet he pulled a face and set it aside. He'd almost forgotten the taste of a good Dornish sour. A good strongwine, redder than garnets and three times as potent as the weak piss he'd been drinking for so many months, would have been even more welcome.

He'd failed. He'd have to go before his father and tell his Prince that he'd failed. Just thinking about it was making everything he'd eaten twist up and sour in his stomach.

Pushing away from the balcony Quentyn decided to summon a bath. He'd never washed the sweat and stink off himself after spending most of the afternoon sparring. He had no idea how Cletus could enjoy a night spent in more exercise. Quentyn hurt everywhere.

Well, not everywhere. Days in the saddle hurt worse than he did. So did falling into the Rhoyne and that thing with the rapids. He'd have to ask his Uncle Oberyn if he'd ever swum in the Rhoyne while it was flooded. He'd leave out the part where he hadn't done it intentionally.

Being Lysene, the servants set the bath up on the balcony so he could bask in the sunset. The silence of the slave servants that had come with the small but comfortable house he'd rented bothered Quentyn. Slavery bothered Quentyn. It did strange things to the societies that it flourished in, and he'd be glad to walk on Westeros' shores again where at least that one singular sin wasn't present.

Keeping his mind from all he'd failed to do by force of will just drove his thoughts to other painful places. While he was in Pentos he'd met with a representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos. Since he hadn't intended to travel that far North it had been efficient for the Bank and the prince to take care of matters there, and the matters they'd taken care of left him feeling hollow and angry.

The Plague had hit Norvos horribly, perhaps worse than any other city in Essos. According to the banker it would take at least four generations to recover its population and longer to reestablish its economy to previous levels. As it was, Quentyn learned that more than his mother had died.

He'd lost his mother's parents. He'd lost his uncle and three cousins. Those assets left with the Iron Bank were now split into two accounts. One was in Quentyn's name and one in Trystane's.

It was a bitter inheritance. Quentyn found himself swaying like a pendulum as he debated whether he blamed his mother more for leaving them or himself for not seeking her out sooner. Now that his mother was dead and Norvos was a shadow of the city where his father still spoke reverently of falling in love with Quentyn's mother, he desperately wished that he'd gone to visit her years before. Instead he'd stayed the quiet, dutiful son and never even asked for fear it would disappoint his father… and inside himself Quentyn knew he never would have asked.

He could only even regret it in the abstract. Every time his mind got a hold on the problem and turned it over, he was left regretful and angry but knowing he'd make the same decisions again. The merchant-nobility of Norvos were ancient and grand, but they were also slave-keepers and dealers. To his mother, the people of Dorne were possessions and not a sacred trust. Somewhere inside himself Quentyn acknowledged that this was the root of his hatred of the institution and not any innate goodness or sense of justice. He blamed his mother's ingrained attitude towards the lower classes and the system of slavery that produced it for his mother's absence from his life.

"If Viserys had lived and you knew the truth, Sister, think of all the fun you could be having right now." Quentyn muttered into the perfumed bath darkly.

As soon as he said it, he was ashamed. Arianne was dead. She'd died horribly. How could he be so petty as to think such of his sister? Once she'd loved him. Once she'd played with him in the Water Gardens and laughed and carried him on her shoulders and blown raspberries in his belly until he was shrieking with laughter and begging for her to stop.

"Then she stopped and I've never forgiven her for it."

Thinking it hurt and left Quentyn rung-out, but he couldn't turn his mind to any good paths. He knew that he'd have to face his father before he knew any peace. As such, he let himself think of his sister, mourn her, and then wish he mourned her more. The bitterest thing, perhaps, about his relationship with Arianne was admitting that whatever deep love his father and uncle had felt for his Aunt Elia, he felt no such thing for his own sister.

"I didn't steal your birthright, Sister, I didn't even want it." Quentyn muttered into the orange-dyed bathwater. The sun fought blushing clouds as it clawed at the watery horizon slowly drowning it. "I wanted to be a knight. I wanted to make our father proud. All you ever wanted to do was amuse yourself, Sister."

"Then you decided something was being stolen from you. Then it mattered to you. Then you hated me for it. Back when you were young and being Ruling Princess meant endless lessons with the maester and less time for play and dance and music, you had no time for any of it, but as soon as you thought someone else might have it, you hated me like a child whose toy was snatched away."

Realizing that sitting in his bath, having a one-sided argument with his dead sister was petty and would make the servants think him mad, Quentyn got out of the bath and toweled himself dry. Guilt was quick upon the heels of his anger anyway.

Intellectually he knew that Arianne had a right to be angry. Dorne was hers rightfully and she'd been intelligent enough to realize their father didn't intend her for the Sunchair. She'd also never asked nor tried to convince their father otherwise. Instead she'd immediately started rebelling, plotting, and growing angrier every day. She hadn't asked for more lessons in leadership and rule. She hadn't attempted to prove her worth. She'd just made wild plans, like the one to run away to Highgarden, and then there was her attempt to run away using the plague as cover and Gerold Dayne as her escort.

Quentyn's heart ached even as he was angry. Life wasn't a song or a romantic story, but that's always how his sister had tried to live it. As if being ravished by a pirate king or a raider didn't leave women bleeding and miserable and cast aside for the use of his other men. As if marriage outside of Dorne would provide her power rather than strip it away. His sister was so much like his uncle in mind and behavior that she'd forgotten she wasn't and couldn't be the Red Viper in the world they lived in, and she'd died for it.

Sitting on a marble bench, watching as the dark waters sucked up the last of the sun's red light like some monster of myth sipping a maiden's blood away, Quentyn just wished he could look back at the sister Arianne had been before she'd hated him and miss her like she deserved. Failing that, he decided to ask for a sleeping drought and get some rest instead. He'd leave for Dorne on the morrow, and when he stood before his father, the Prince, there'd be no escaping reality. He might as well be well-rested for the trip.

 

* * *

 

 

"I'm sorry, Father, I've failed you."

The formal greeting by the court was over, as was the requisite feast, and when he might have otherwise been resting in his rooms at Sunspear, Prince Quentyn Martell was actually grateful to be standing before his father in the Prince of Dorne's solar. He'd returned from Yronwood amidst the plague to fear the place, for he felt he could never live up to his father's standards of rule. He came to lose the fear and gain a feeling of love and family his long fostership had injured in the time that followed as he worked to help his father plan the enormous task that was acquiring goats with goatsbane, spreading the disease amidst the Dornish goat population, and then distributing the goats elsewhere to wipe out the dreaded plague.

Now Quentyn was just happy to stand before his father so he could get this over with. He imagined this was what facing execution was like. Once all of your appeals was over, once trial by combat had been exhausted, what was left but to get the grief over it over as quickly as possible?

"How so, my son?"

Quentyn forced himself to look directly at his father rather than to the left of his ear. His heart clenched. His father looked older and less healthy than when Quentyn had left. His hair was grayer, with fewer black strands wound through the lighter mass of it. His features were marked more deeply into lines carved around his eyes and mouth by pain as much as age. He not only wore his formal robes, but a thin silk blanket had been draped over his lap as he sat in his wheeled chair. This was a precaution that Quentyn knew his father only took when hiding truly horrible swelling in his feet and bad leg as a result of his gout.

"I returned empty handed." Quentyn swallowed and went on. "Not because the Princess Daenerys is dead, but because I chose - I chose to to encourage her to stay in Essos."

A flicker of surprise did touch his father's face, mostly in his impenetrable black eyes, but it was smoothed away so quickly that someone unfamiliar with Prince Doran wouldn't have been able to see it at all.

"I would hear why you made this choice, then, my son."

Quentyn didn't bother to launch into a grand description of his trip. His father had already heard most of it. It had been a diplomatic trip, if one with a second agenda, and he'd visited Lys, Voltanis, and Pentos as much to keep thoughts of what sending the inoculation meant, alive in those places. In that sense, the trip had been a great success. Quentyn had returned to Dorne heavily laden with precious gifts and the weightless but incalculably valuable good will of the Free Cities.

All of those things Quentyn had spoken of in open court. All of those things his father was aware of because he'd made a point to be very visible when doing those things. He'd even sent letters back regarding it that were specifically designed to be read and reread by spies as the courriers carried them back to Sunspear.

"When it became clear that the only place that the rightful Queen could be was with the Dothraki, if she lived at all, we went east."

"A dangerous path."

"I know my duty, Father." Quentyn regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth and felt his face redden. "I also bear the responsibility for abrogating it."

Prince Doran said nothing and Quentyn forced himself to go on with the story. He told his father about how most of his party had ended up dead in various encounters with stray members of the fearsome barbarian people. How Cletus had lost an ear in one such fight. How he'd acquired the thick scar that started out as a fine white line on his right cheek, then turned into a thick white slash that carried over his collarbone and down his chest before terminating over his ribs. Quentyn knew his father would want every detail. He concentrated on being as accurate as possible as he got to the part of the story that was most important.

"Daenerys Targaryen was taken out of Pentos during the plague by a Dothraki warrior. Khal Drogo was promised her as a bride by her brother. Apparently Illyrio Mopatis convinced him that he could retake Westeros with ten-thousand Dothraki screamers."

Prince Doran's eyebrows rose.

"Viserys Targaryen believed he could take a continent with ten thousand warriors?"

Quentyn pulled a face, but nodded. The Prince, in turn, looked grim.

"Mayhaps it is best that he was either unaware of or uninclined to honor his betrothal to your sister. Please, continue, Quentyn. You say you found the Princess?"

Quentyn noted with the slightest spark of surprise that his father referred to the last of the Targaryens as a princess rather than the rightful queen. Tucking that fact away, he nodded and went on.

"Khal Drogo retrieved his bride and they vanished into the Grass Sea. When I finally stumbled across them I expected more fighting, but the Khal feasted me in honor due to my blood." Quentyn shook his head. "Remember the mystery of why we received gifts supposedly from the Dothraki despite sending no goats there?"

"Yes, it was an interesting moment."

"The Dothraki deal with plagues by breaking their khalasar up into small groups and scattering throughout the Great Grass Sea. This time it wasn't effective to the same level because the Grey Plague had already been spread to a group that had gone to Vaes Dothrak."

"I see."

"It's also why we kept getting attacked; any who were thought to display signs of plague were killed. Desperate people who believed they might show signs of illness fled. They end up raiding along the edges of the Great Grass Sea, looking for foreigners to prey upon."

"By the time that Khal Drogo had taken the Princess out of Pentos, she'd heard rumors of the inoculation coming from Dorne. Over the moons of her marriage to the Khal, they came to know some affection and trust for one another and she convinced him to go seeking the inoculation. They approached Mereen, who gave them some of the goats we sent over, and the inoculation spread from there to increase Khal Drogo's fame among his people and his wife's as well."

"I'm surprised they were willing to part with any of the goats we sent over."

"They'd already followed your instructions to spread the disease amidst their own animals, and they didn't have the strength to defend the city." Quentyn rubbed a hand over his face. "The Dothraki have few healers and those they do are ill-trained. They were decimated by the plague as badly as anyone in Essos. By the time I arrived, Khal Drogo had reassembled and inoculated his Khalasar and he still had less than half of the people he had before the plague. Other groups fared worse, though I've yet to determine if the largest part of the losses were the result of the plague or leaderless small groups falling upon each other and massacring each other for supplies or over old slights when there was no Khal to strongarm them into submission. Without strong leadership the Dothraki do poorly."

"So do we, as the Usurper has amply proven, Quentyn." His father returned with a touch of wryness. "Son, would you not prefer to sit."

"I would rather stand." Quentyn wanted to face his shame properly.

"I see." Prince Doran mused quietly and then nodded. "You said that affection and trust had grown between Daenerys Targaryen and her barbarian warlord. Is that why you encouraged her to stay in Essos?"

"Partially." Quentyn wanted to wet his lips, but didn't. He owed his father and his Prince perfect honesty. "Given the situation I could do nothing to make her leave and she had no wish to. The Princess was also midway through her first pregnancy by the Khal. Westeros would not accept a future King who was half Dothraki."

Prince Doran listened silently and Quentyn went on.

"Also, if I did convince her to come, she would have done so while convincing her husband to do the same. Were House Martell to bring a force of violent barbarians like the Dothraki across the sea, the response would be swift and absolute: all of Westeros would unite against us. Even most of the Loyalist Houses would have united against us. It would have been the end of our House."

Quentyn didn't notice his speech becoming more passionate and agitated as he fell back into the mental turmoil that had characterized his time as Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen's guest in the Great Grass Sea. The long hours of speech he'd had with the princess had been even worse in many ways than the other things he'd endured. The Dothraki didn't spar and he'd ended up drawn into dozens of duels. He'd killed men for no reason other than pride and entertainment and nearly died more than once for the same reason. Cletus had gone through the same and they'd lost the few guards they'd arrived in the Princess' presence with, save for two men, while guests.

"Should we have been foolish enough to think that we could win by augmenting our forces with Khal Drogo's twenty-thousand Dothraki warriors, we'd have gotten a nasty shock trying to transport them. They can't fight without their horses, at least not in any fashion useful on a battlefield, and shipping horses across the Narrow Sea would mean thirty-to-fifty percent losses. Something that would have then had staggering effects on Dothraki morale as they see their horses as the ultimate sign of their status."

"Then there would have been the matter of actual battle." Quentyn felt his lips thin. "Most of Essos can't fight, Father! The slaves have no reason to fight, so they run, and the pampered elite of Essos haven't touched a weapon since before Valyria fell. They rely on sellswords of which there are simply not enough to defend more than mayhaps four of the larger cities at any one time with any competency. This is largely why the Dothraki are so dangerous."

"Since the Dothraki are a brutally efficient but totally unorganized raiding force they could sweep through and destroy the smallfolk and their crops, but they know nothing of siege warfare or of organized combat. I estimate they'd produce six months of success in warfare, then disease, lack of supplies, and attrition would lead to a quick and messy collapse as the opposition organized and began hemming them in. Once the Dothraki were denied free movement, their style of warfare would be a hindrance rather than a path to victory and they'd be slaughtered."

"So the Princess is in large part ruined as far as Westeros is concerned." Quentyn went on, no longer seeing his father or the solar around him, but instead back in a tent on the waving sea of grass speaking to the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen and hating every word he had to say, "She was wed to a man who would be despised both for himself and for his culture by the people she would try and claim to rule over; nobility and smallfolk alike. Her husband's military potential would be ineffective in the long term in Westeros, and would inescapably stain the honor of any ally who assisted her in bringing the Dothraki over the Narrow Sea. Personally, she speaks the Common Tongue with a strange accent, has no knowledge of our culture, and is no longer in a position to take a powerful husband and make alliances."

"Did you tell the Princess this?"

"Not at first." Quentyn swallowed. "She - Daenerys Targaryen is kind, Father and decent but she's also young and very foreign and raised with arrogance and lack of understanding… She wanted to know about her family."

Doran's dark eyes lit with understanding.

"The good and the bad?"

"She didn't realize there was bad, at first." Quentyn confessed. "I thought, at first, she might come back with me if the throne meant enough to her. So I wanted her to understand the dangers of the throne and her family history. Over time I realized her love for her horse lord and how - how _foreign_ she was. By the end of it we spoke of everything we've spoken of now, and I gave her to understand what her father was and why any Targaryen making a bid for the throne would have to fight against honest fear and grievance rather than simple greed and betrayal."

"And so Princess Daenerys chose to remain in Essos, instead of pursuing a line of living and behavior which would rob her of freedom to act and freedom to choose."

"Such is the responsibility of a crown." Quentyn found himself speaking before he thought, quoting the man sitting in front of back to himself as the words from his childhood lessons tumbled off his lips. His face reddened, but Prince Doran's expression didn't change. "I'm sorry, Father. In the end, given the choices… I chose to discourage her from ever crossing the Narrow Sea."

Silence stretched out for several long moments and Quentyn had to fight not to fidget. When his father spoke again Quentyn held in a wince.

"Come closer, Son."

Preparing for whatever punishment he'd earned, Quentyn took the three steps separating him from where his father sat in the throne-like wheeled chair. The ebony of it gleamed in the sun and the nacre inlay glittered sharply against the dark wood. Quentyn prepared himself to own the full share of his shame for his intentional failure.

Prince Doran Martell's hands settled on his son's shoulders and Quentyn's throat clenched around a pained noise of surprise as he was drawn into a harsh embrace. Without thought Quentyn returned the gesture. A moment later a dry kiss of benediction had been pressed to Quentyn's brow and then he was pushed back slightly as the black eyes he'd inherited from his father fixed on him. It took Quentyn a moment to realize that his ever-composed father's eyes shone with tears and that Prince Doran was smiling at him, his face beaming with strong emotion.

"I have never been prouder than I am today, Quentyn. _Never_."

"Father?"

"Quentyn, your Prince sent you to Essos with orders. He sent you with a mission and a goal." Prince Doran began, his voice stern and Quentyn opened his mouth to apologize again, but was stopped by his father's words. "Hush. Quentyn, I sent a barely-knighted boy to Essos, but a _Prince_ returned to me. Do you understand?"

"No." Quentyn replied helplessly and his father chuckled softly.

"Sit down Quentyn, you're making my neck ache."

Quentyn, who was shorter than his father when the Prince stood, felt himself smiling at those words as he fetched a chair in bemusement and dragged it over to sit next to his father. Doran nudged his chair forward until their knees were all but touching. Then Prince Doran did something he was rarely inclined to do; he explained.

"I sent you to assure our revenge, and that is something I still hold dear, my son. However, you put your people, our House, and the peace and safety of the people of Westeros before your orders. You chose to do what was best for us rather than blindly following my orders. Will this always be the right choice? No, and I accept that one day I may rue such decisions as all parents do when their children are grown and their time is over. This does not change the fact that you chose what was right over what would gain you my approval or get you what you wished for."

"All I ever wished for was your approval." Quentyn blurted it out before he could stop himself and swallowed, deciding that if he was to go so far in humiliating himself he might as well go all the way. "Your approval and your love, Father. I want you to be proud of me."

"I am."

No words had ever been sweeter.

 

 

* * *

 

Quentyn was still reeling from the emotional day before when he rose the next morning. He rose early, as was his habit, but was pleased when he found out his father was still abed. All too often the pain kept his father awake, but the night before had been different. They'd talked long past sunset, of Dorne, of the news Quentyn hadn't received, and he'd managed to convince his father to take a sleeping draught so he could get some rest.

Father will probably be abed until noon. Quentyn thought to himself. So my time's my own.

"Good morning Cletus." Quentyn said pleasantly as he kept his eyes firmly averted and wandered over to a window as he let himself into his friend's room. "Good morning, Nym. How have you been?"

"Curious!" His cousin laughed languidly and he listened to the sound of the mattress stretching as a muffled sort of mumbling filled the background.

"Has your curiosity about my foster-brother been sufficiently answered so that I might speak with him while we break our fast?"

"Oh, I wasn't curious about Ser Cletus. Yronwoods are all the same." There was a fleshy patting noise and a throaty chuckle from his cousin, then the rustling noise of silk being shaken out and someone dressing. Quentyn looked out the window over the sands and admired the warm, familiar, rust color of the dunes. "I'm curious about you. How was your trip? I know only that you went and came back alone."

"I'll tell you all I may later this afternoon, if you'd like?"

"I would, Cousin." Nymeria gave him a wet kiss on the cheek that had him nudging her away with his elbow and shooting her an annoyed look.

"I'm a man of seven-and-ten and knighted, Nym, not a boy of four chasing you around the Water Gardens."

"You'll always be a chubby toddler to me, Quentyn, even when you're my Prince."

"I was afraid of that."

Nym just laughed at him, as he'd thought she would. He let it go and asked the polite question he'd intended to upon entering the room.

"I'm meeting Obara to spar in three hours. Want to join us?"

"Wouldn't miss it." Nym promised. "Bring the randy one?"

"As you wish."

Bidding his cousin goodbye for the present, Quentyn waited until the door closed to turn around fully. He wasn't surprised to find Cletus where Nym had left him. His friend wasn't merely in the bed, he was tied to it. Going over he noted the fact that soft toweling had been wound around the young knight's wrists and ankles before the silk cords were used to bind him hand and foot, spread eagle, to the bed posts. Cletus was quick to begin his protest.

"Your cousin is cruel!"

"My cousin enjoys the company of women exclusively." Quentyn replied dryly, but secretly he was a little impressed. "However did you end up in bed with her?"

"She tricked me!" Cletus had never sounded more outraged. "I was… Alright, maybe I was a little pushy during the feast, but she seemed to like it after the third time she told me to go away. Then she convinced me to try being bound and invited the Fowler twins to join us, but instead they wouldn't even touch me!"

"Stop, I don't want to hear anymore!"

"It was torture!"

"If any of the Sand Snakes decide to torture you, Cletus, you'll _know_ it."

Cletus glared at him as Quentyn tried to get the knots untied binding his hands. They wouldn't budge. He checked and was relieved to see that the knots were drawn tight but the loops weren't. His friend wasn't at any risk due to lack of circulation. Reaching into his boot he pulled out a knife and began sawing at the silken ropes with care.

"They padded your wrists."

"I couldn't do anything but watch."

"I said I didn't want to hear anymore!"

"I need someone to commiserate with!"

"Ser Argon Brae."

"The jouster?"

"They did this to him last year when _he_ was being an ass."

"Oh… he'll understand, then?"

"Better than I." Quentyn agreed. "Just don't tell me, clear?"

"Yes, my Prince." Cletus smirked and stretched his arm out, bending it back, and then groaning. "Oh, this hurts."

"Been strung up all night?"

"Since shortly after the feast."

"Ah."

"Your cousin even slept on me."

"Nym likes to cuddle."

Cletus gave him a strange look and Quentyn felt himself flush before he chuckled helplessly at the memory.

"Uncle used to tell us all stories of his travels. Ellaria would gather up rugs and blankets and make a great mountain of them on the floor of Uncle's solar. Then we'd all pile together to listen. Nymeria would wedge herself between me, Trystane, and whatever younger sisters she could convince to ignore the body heat and lean against each other. Obara was always shoving her for it."

"Ah." Cletus nodded, then sat up as his second arm was free and propped himself up to look down at where Quentyn was freeing his feet. He had the good sense not to try and do it himself given the state his arms were in. "I envy you that, sometimes. Father was never so informal, nor was anyone at Yronwood really."

"I've spent more time with your family than my own, Cletus, there's no shame there. Your father is a great lord and a fine knight."

"Yes, but he's at pains to make sure everyone's always aware of it. He's the _Bloodroyal_ and everyone must always be kept aware of it. That's never allowed for stories piled together with cousins or quiet days speaking of rulership in his solar. Father needs to be seen so he is ever on the move all over our lands. I learned more of my duties as a lord from the letters your father wrote you than my father's lessons."

"I never thought of it that way." Quentyn allowed, then sat down on a chair as he watched his friend swing his freed feet around and began stumbling and cursing his way around the room to get his stretched limbs to limber up again. "I wanted to talk to you."

"How bad was it?" Cletus' expression was worried. "I told you that we should have poisoned the Khal and made off with the Queen in the dead of night."

"Princess." Quentyn stressed instead, his expression becoming a bit shocked. "I - Father agreed with me, Cletus. He said he was proud of me."

Cletus tripped, banging his shin against a footstool and cursing. Once he'd turned he surveyed Quentyn with shock. After a moment he came back and sat down on the edge of the bed, resting his rubbery limbs.

"Truly?"

Quentyn nodded, his throat too tight to speak.

"I… I'm glad. If anyone deserves such praise, it's you." Cletus managed, but then his expression darkened and he lowered his voice. "What about the Princess' revenge? What about the Lannisters? They shamed all of us and the Usurper violated all bounds of honor and assaulted Dorne itself when it spilled the Princess Elia's blood and that of her babes. It can't go unpunished."

Quentyn paused and got up to press his ear to the door. Now that Cletus had been on such a journey with him and knew everything that Quentyn knew there was no point in silence. Moreover, at Quentyn's request Cletus had been honored with guest quarters in the Family Wing. There should be no chance of them being overheard, but he checked to make sure only the loyal guard outside the door remained anyway.

"Father says that there are new avenues to pursue for my aunt's justice."

"Did he say what they were?"

Quentyn shot his friend a wry look and Cletus ran a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes. His left eye was lazy and didn't respond as well, but it didn't detract from his good looks. Even the missing ear revealed when the long auburn hair was shoved aside didn't, and his fairer skin and freckles looked dramatic amongst the Salty Dornish of Sunspear even if they were typical enough amongst the Stony Dornish.

"Right. So... What's next?"

"I'm to take a wife." Quentyn colored. "The sooner the better, and with an eye towards a powerful alliance inside Dorne."

"So you won't be waiting for Gwyneth?"

Quentyn winced at the hurt in his foster-brothers tone and sighed, leaning back further in his chair.

"I wish I could. At least I know Gwyneth… but you know it would leave the other Houses feeling House Yronwood has too much power and favoritism."

"Because you fostered with us for so long and call me brother." Cletus allowed, blowing out a breath and making a face. "Father will not like it… but he'll understand. If it's a House we're allied with, anyway."

"I know, and I wouldn't insult your father in any way." Quentyn rubbed a hand over his face. "Remind me what the short list is on House Yronwood's current grudges."

"Does your father have some kind of list of Houses he needs to bring into the fold before a major conflict?"

"Yes."

"This is the least passionate and attractive way to choose a bride I've ever heard of." Cletus complained.

"Be glad you're not a prince."

"I grow more grateful every day."

"Grudges, Cletus."

"Right… It can't be the Jordaynes, there's still that mess over who's liable for the caravan from three years ago. We got stuck with the cost and it was not inconsiderable... Vaith's right out since Father still feels slighted that Lord Daeron's turned him down flat when Father wanted to court his daughter all those years ago."

"What about those rumors that the future Lady of House Vaith's two daughters are his?"

"Not true, though Father wouldn't mind if they were. Mother herself would be pleased, she's always happy to see our influence expand… Still, no Yronwood blood there."

"Either way, House Vaith's already very loyal. We don't need to tie them down." Quentyn dismissed it with a frown. "They helped us with the breeding progress that spread goatsbane so well. Any more Houses to avoid least your House be mortally offended?"

"I wish you were japing." Cletus muttered and thought about it. His father was a reasonable man, but he was passionate and could hold a grudge. "Manwoody is hit-or-miss. Father's fine with them, but Mother's convinced that Lady Manwoody's been slighting her for years over something that happened when they were maidens and she was fostering at Kingsgrave."

"They were on Father's shortlist." Quentyn frowned, then sighed and thought. "Wasn't your maternal grandmother a Wyl?"

"Yes, but that House has been cut down lately. They lost most of their members during the Usurper's War. Now all that's left is Lord Egon Wyl and his son and a daughter a little younger than we are. Who else was on Prince Doran's shortlist besides House Wyl?"

"One of three daughters of House Santagar, Allyria Dayne, Lady Wells if she'd give her House up to her younger brother, House Blackmont's oldest daughter… I think father favors Ysette Blackmont. I know she was a favorite of his when she was at the Water Gardens, and she only left last year."

"We've got close ties to the Blackmonts." Cletus replied, his expression speculative before he pulled a disgusted face. "I told you that you should have spent time in the pillow houses on Lys, Quentyn. This is no way to lose your virginity!"

Quentyn glared as he felt his ears turning burgundy, but refused to back down. If he could face down Dothraki blades, ride into the endless grasslands of the Horse Lords with only one friend and six men, and if he could stuff one of the Usurper's wandering assassins into a crack in the walls of Pentos and smother him so he couldn't follow them into the Grass Sea, then he could damn well deal with Cletus' teasing.

"As my uncle would say: unless you're interested in divesting me of it, then my virginity is no business of your own."

Cletus' disgusted face grew horrified and he began to issue a stuttering mix of apology and censure that had Quentyn ruefully laughing as he shook his head and rose from his seat.

"Come on. Father wants to interrogate you now and it's a poor knight who keeps your Prince waiting."

"You're the one delaying me."

"Alright, next time I'll send your body servant in to untie you. It's not like he'll report back to your father or any such thing."

Cletus paled before turning so red his freckles connected.

"You're the worst brother I've ever had."

"You've only sisters, Cletus."

"I stand by my statement. No brother could be crueler."

"I'll ask Father to loan you his."

"I think I liked you better before you discovered your sense of humor."

Laughing, Prince Quentyn Martell picked up his friend's pants off of the floor and threw the trousers at Cletus' face. Outside the sun was warm and bright. The sands were red. Life, Quentyn found, went on.


	3. Robb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What has the Young Wolf been up to?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This occurs around 5 months after Lyarra and Oberyn leave KL for Dorne. So Lyarra's there, she's settled in, and she's writing Robb letters about what's going on in Sunspear. Meanwhile, Robb's got his own life and responsibilities to deal with.

**298 A.C. - Five moons after Oberyn and Lyarra have left King's Landing…**

 

The sun was nowhere to be seen in a clear night sky spangled with gleaming silver pinpoints of light and generously swathed with bands of glowing color. Robb Stark tore his eyes away from the panes of glass in the Lord's Solar and turned his attention back to the papers spread across the desk in front of him. He should have been abed at that moment, but he'd been unable to sleep and work had called him to a room Robb thought as solely his father's still and wasn't comfortable working alone in. He'd sent Sam Tarly away hours before, and though Robb hadn't quite known what to do with the fat, timid, boy when he'd arrived he'd quickly discovered that Samwell Tarly was perhaps the most gifted person he'd ever met when it came to facts, figures, logistics, and simple logical deduction. Robb had begun to rely on him in matters of paperwork and minutiae that weren't too secret or vital to the North.

 _While I am gone, you are Lord Stark._ The words echoed through Robb's mind, said once when his father went south to take Lyarra to King's Landing and again in White Harbor where Robb had bid his father goodbye as Lord Stark went to join the King at war in the Vale.  _Do not forget that. You are not a boy stepping into boots too big for you. You are not merely my son. You are my Heir, and while I am not dead, in my absence you inherit all of my duties and authority._

At that moment Bran was lying warm in his bed. His brother was anticipating a day spent training under their Uncle Blackfish. He was a squire with a keep of his own being built, but too young to have to get lost in the minutiae of numbers and careful haggling to make sure all of the materials and labor required to restore Moat Cailin came at a price that was fair and within the tight budget that Lord Stark had set for the restoration of the great keep. Bran's deepest responsibility was making sure that he didn't fall behind in Maester Luwin's lessons while still keeping all of Ser Brynden Tully's gear spotless and his horses well cared for.

Robb had never really been jealous of his younger brothers. They were just that much younger than he was. At that moment, however, he was jealous. How nice it would be to be a squire with future duties buried in the future rather than sitting heavy on his shoulders in the present.

Grey Wind, laying sprawled against the coldest part of the solar's wall seemed to pick up on Robb's thoughts. He did not have much sympathy. Instead of whining or coming over to be petted, the massive wolf broke wind and rolled over, kicking his four feet up into the air.

"You've no excuse for that." Robb picked up a letter from Lord Ryswell and fanned the air creeping towards him in a cloud of noxious fumes back towards his companion. "Keavan's not here to feed you things you oughtn't have. You're doing that just to be disagreeable."

Grey Wind, his four feet still in the air, wagged his dark gray plume of a tail. Robb glared half-heartedly back. The useless staring match between himself and a direwolf not even looking in his direction was ended by a polite rap at his door; unlike the Southrons, they didn't bother with any silly scratching.

"Enter." Robb settled the letter back in its place and smiled slightly as his mother stepped into the room.

When Lady Stark paused, her mouth twisting in distaste two steps in, Robb tried not to laugh and mostly succeeded.

"Robb, are you alright?"

"It was Grey Wind."

His mother shot him a disbelieving look. Robb shot her an injured look in return. His mother said nothing. Robb was suspicious that the next morning he'd find the servants only offering him unsweetened gruel or clear broth to break his fast with. Keavan Forrester's insistence on giving Grey Wind whatever he was eating had led to Lady Stark being convinced her eldest son's stomach had grown delicate in response to the stress he was under. Robb decided he hadn't an ounce of sympathy over the fact that Keavan's father had recalled him to House Forrester's lands and was arranging his marriage.

"May I help you, Mother?"

"You may, but I actually came here to help  _you_." Lady Catelyn smiled warmly as she held up one hand with four thick sheafs of parchment. "Your sister has written from Dorne. As you're my firstborn, my future Lord, and awake, I thought you deserved to read your letter first."

"Thank you!" Robb's dark mood lit up slightly and he reached out eagerly, taking the thick letter he was offered and taking a seat. He was about to open it, absorbed in the potential news, when he paused sheepishly as he realized he was ignoring his mother.

"Read your letter. I have one from Edmure I wish to read, myself."

Pleased, Robb smiled at his mother again and then delved into his letter. It was a good letter, full of news. Lyarra was at the time when she ought to soon go into confinement for the birth of her child at the Water Gardens, but that was being held off. Since his return, Prince Quentyn had been in search of a bride. His recent choice of a lady of House Wyl meant that Dorne was having its first royal wedding in decades and Prince Doran wished it to be a spectacle for political and personal reasons. Robb hummed as he read the details.

"Is everything alright, Robb?"

"As Prince Oberyn's wife, Lyarra's the highest ranking female member of House Martell. She's having to organize much of Prince Quentyn's wedding."

"In her condition?"

Robb felt a flare of affection and relief for his mother. There was actual concern in her voice. There was even a hint of irritation at the news.

"Aye."

"Your father would never have allowed that. He has always taken the greatest care with my health when I'm with child." Lady Catelyn paused, seeming to debate a few things, then came to a decision. "I will write the Princess and her husband. If h-her mother did indeed die in childbed then they should be cautious with her during this time."

"Thank you, I'm sure she'll appreciate it." Robb agreed, though he was sure Lyarra would eye the letter warily and only relax once she realized it was meant well. His mother communicated far more effectively with her husband's bastard, and far more kindly, with hundreds of leagues between them and ink instead of words.

Lady Catelyn returned to her own letter, and if Robb wasn't wrong, there was a hint of color in his mother's cheeks. He didn't say anything, however, and kept reading. Perhaps his mother's kindness to Lyarra was too little and too late, but he'd take it. As it was, he was eager to know if his sister had received his ' _gift_ ' yet.

There was no subtle reference to Theon having arrived in Sunspear in the letter. Robb read it twice just to check, and was pleased when his mother said nothing of his obvious hunger to read the letter so closely. He was sure she attributed it solely to his concern for his sister and his loneliness without his almost-twin. As Robb felt both of these things, it wasn't entirely an incorrect assumption.

"How is Lyarra, beyond the stress of arranging the Heir to Dorne's wedding?" Lady Catelyn finally asked after she'd folded her own letter up and settled her hands in her lap as she sat across from Robb on the other side of his father's desk.

"Lyarra's well. She says that the babe's active at night and keeps her awake." Robb replied, then grinned. "She's still insisting it will be a boy and the Viper's insisting it will be another girl with all of Sunspear backing him. I hope it's a boy just to spite him."

"Boy or girl, a healthy babe is a joy to any mother." Lady Catelyn laughed, then offered her son a brief, mischievous smile. "Though… I  _do_  imagine Prince Oberyn's expression would be priceless if he had a son after all of the daughters he's produced."

Robb laughed for a moment, and went on.

"She's getting along better with the younger of Prince Oberyn's daughters, as well."

"They miss their mother, Robb, you can't fault four little girls for being harsh to a stepmother they didn't want after mourning their own mother's loss."

"No, but I don't like how it upset Lyarra at first." Robb chuckled. "I think it's funny that Prince Oberyn spent so long saying his eldest would all but adopt Arya, but now Arya's thick as thieves with the Lady Obella and Lady Elia."

"They're all much of an age. It's more natural that they'd be closer than a grown woman like the Lady Obara would be with a girl Arya's age."

"The way Lyarra tells it, the Lady Obara can't cope with Arya's need to question everything. Luckily Arya's 'dance master' went with them."

Robb saw his mother's lips thin, then watched her sigh and shake her head as she fingered another letter in her hands that she'd opened and read while he was occupied with Lyarra's letter.

"Is that from Arya?"

"It is."

"She forgot to write me, didn't she?"

"No, she just wrote several letters on a single sheet again. Yours is on the back."

Robb accepted the letter and accepted that it was far shorter than Lyarra's. It made him smile, however, at how Lyarra's letter flowed neatly and expressed her thoughts, situation, responsibilities, and several cute anecdotes about her new family and her life with them. Arya's letter hopped around like a cricket on a hot hearthstone and all it talked about was the 'adventures' she'd gotten up to with the Sand Snakes she was now closest with and her lessons in Water Dancing.

"Arya's writing is much better. That scroll she sent you on your nameday was beautiful."

"It was." Lady Stark smiled.

"I particularly liked the border of knives dripping drops of blood that turned into flowers." Robb offered and got an exasperated look before Lady Stark broke down and laughed openly.

"At least I have no doubt that it was mine daughter's own work and design. Your Uncle Edmure sends his greetings and good wishes, by the way, and wishes to know when you'regetting married."

"He's turning into Grandfather." Robb groaned in irritation. "Isn't he?"

"There are worse transformations he could make."

"At least Grandfather can stop worrying. He's wed now, and Lyra Mormont lacks nothing in asserting herself." Robb shrugged and felt sheepish as his mother shot him a sharp look for that little bit of disrespect. "Mother, your brother is a decent man, but you have to admit that the Lady Lyra is giving him more of a backbone than he otherwise would have."

"Did you receive a letter from Highgarden recently?"

"It was from Lord Willas Tyrell." Robb allowed the change in topic, but saw where this was going and decided to nip it immediately in the bud. "He's a great friend to Prince Oberyn. Lyarra's husband wrote him about the way the North manages its forests so that we do not suffer the clear-cutting that the South has blighted itself with. I wrote him back with a breakdown of the numbers, Mother, that is all. Besides, he and some of his family are going to Sunspear to attend Prince Quentyn's wedding."

Lady Stark's eyes remained sharp but a little of the bright, hungry light left them and Robb relaxed slightly. Though his mother was more aware of Northern politics now than she'd been before, as she moved away from her fears that some Karstark or Bolton might wed Lyarra and make a play for Winterfell through her, Robb knew that Edmure's recent wedding and her increased correspondence with her own father had relit old fires. Lady Stark wanted a Southron gooddaughter.

Robb didn't actually hate his mother or even resent her for her wishes. He knew the largest part of it came from loneliness. He firmly believed that it was a fiction created by petty minds that his mother had come to the North thinking she was going to be some shining light that converted them all to the Seven and changed their way of life. That was just fear talking.

His mother was, however, lonelier than ever in her Faith with the Septa gone. It didn't help that further investigation had found that many of the servants she'd brought with her from the Riverlands during her marriage had been accepting the Septa's bribes and passing information along to the woman as well. The result had been people that his mother depended on since childhood being publicly dismissed, many sent away after some manner of corporal punishment with no more than the clothes on their back and a merchant caravan paid to feed and shelter them until they were back in the Riverlands.

Given this situation and Hoster Tully's constant reminders that marriages are also the best and most lasting political tool the nobility had, Robb had been fielding many _suggestions_ from his mother. None of which Robb was going to even consider. After months as close friends with the Heirs of Last Hearth, House Forrester, and House Karstark's third son, Robb was only too aware of his own disadvantages.

Robb looked like an Andal. His mother's Faith was seen as a threat. _Grey Wind_ was his best asset in appearing a Stark, but it was imperative to the success of his own rule and his siblings' safety that he appear as Northern as possible. That meant that, some slight unease and guilt at it aside, he hadn't stepped foot in his mother's Sept since he'd returned to Winterfell from the weirwood survey. It also meant that he needed a Northern wife.

"Uncle Edmure's one to talk considering he married a Northern woman of little dowry." Robb finally stated, shaking his head. "How are your father's bannermen taking it?"

"Father was unhappy at first, but willing to allow it despite the grumblings of the bannermen because Lyra Mormont was the first time Edmure hinted at being willing to wed." Lady Catelyn told her son, her expression bewildered. "Why Edmure would favor her so I have no idea…"

"As I said before; she's been good for him."

"Oh, I wouldn't argue that." Robb's mother agreed quickly, her expression still perplexed. "Your father's letters say he's even making a name for himself in battle in the Vale."

"Along with his wife." Robb's tongue was firmly in his cheek, but even his mother had to smile wryly at that.

"Lyra Mormont fights like three men, and the Riverlands doesn't know what to do with her, but Edmure does know that he'll have to fight to keep her."

"So Uncle's building his reputation in the Vale with his wife by his side. When he gets back to the Riverlands he'll need to move further to cement his control over the bannermen."

"My father writes that Edmure's never been more attentive to his advice on managing the banners, and your father writes that Edmure seeks his advice regularly as well." His mother's face grew troubled. "I worry, though. Edmure may have to leave the Vale and return to the Riverlands soon."

"The bandits?"

"The brigandry is getting very bad, and they've finally tracked it to the border with the Westerlands. Your grandfather plans to write Lord Tywin to tax him on the subject."

"Well, that will tell us if the Old Lion is behind it." Robb decided, scowling. "If the Prince of Tongue's grandfather is in the same camp with the Mad Queen, the brigands will either vanish - proving he knew it all along - or not, and prove by his denials that he's hiding military aggression behind false disorder."

"I agree. The idea that Lord Tywin has no control over his own people is laughable." Lady Stark reached up and rubbed a hand over her face. "That said, Robb, please stop referring to the Crown Prince as the Prince of Tongues and the Queen by that name. Your father has written that the King plans to handle it by sending the boy to the Wall. It is not politically wise to stir things up when an upheaval like that is in the works, and the Queen has yet to be set aside. Nor, might I add,  _will_  she be if she comes down with child now that she's back in King's Landing."

"She's back in King's Landing, but the King is not. If she comes down with child, I think House Lannister's problems aren't going to lessen."

"Robb Stark!"

"Sorry, Mother." Robb held both his hands up. "I'm just tired."

Grey Wind chose that moment to get up and come over, resting his muzzle on Robb's knee as Robb stroked his fur.

"I hear sleep improves that."

"I'm not going to get any sleep until I reconcile the costs being saved by that liquid stone mixture that Lyarra sent us from her Valyrian scroll translations with Torrhen's new ideas for improving Moat Cailin's security from Northern attacks."

"And why should Moat Cailin be attacked from the North?"

"It shouldn't be, but I won't send Bran to take up residence in a keep with known weaknesses." Robb pulled out the ledger and gestured to it with his mother as he retrieved his abacus. "That concrete is amazing, however."

"Your father was much impressed to see it on his way south to the Vale." Lady Stark agreed, her expression curious. "He said it sets even underwater?"

"Aye." Robb grinned evilly. "After Moat Cailin is done, Edmure and I have talked about its uses in bridge building. House Frey may be in for a difficult time if we keep the bannermen busy during Winter with building projects. The question is simply one of funds and the length of the winter."

"I'm sure." Lady Catelyn grinned back and leaned forward. "Let me help you with your figures, then, and you can get some sleep, my son."

Reluctantly, but gratefully, Robb agreed and an hour later he'd penned a letter, sealed it, and left it sitting on the edge of his father's desk. The next morning, before he'd broken his fast, he'd see Maester Luwin send it South to where Torrhen Stark oversaw the construction on Moat Cailin. Then it was back to work.

* * *

"Never seen its like! Truly, Lord Jon, do the Northern Lights appear every night?"

"More often than not." Smalljon Umber's deep voice rumbled with pleasure. "They get brighter the further North you go. Here, in Winterfell, you might see them three or four times a moon. At Last Hearth, however, we see them near every night and far brighter than this."

"You're so lucky to live in such a beautiful place!"

"Oh, I wouldn't call it beautiful -well, no, I  _would_  for it's my home. It's not nearly so grand as Winterfell, though."

"A home doesn't have to be grand as long as it's filled with love and family. The Twins is _grand_ , but it's filled with petty strife and bickering and its beauty suffers."

"I wouldn't say  _all_  of its beauty suffers, my lady."

Sansa Stark sighed loudly and Robb worked very hard not to laugh as he firmly ignored what was going on further down the table. Lady Roslin Frey was a comely young lass, not long flowered. Her hair was a soft russet-brown and her skin was fair. Her large eyes were dark brown, as melting as any doe, and she had a fine voice and played the lute well.

She also wasn't stupid. Robb had watched with some worry as the young woman latched onto Smalljon and began to draw him out of his pining for Lyarra with warm attention and obvious admiration. At first he'd just wanted to guard his friend against a fortune seeker from a shameful family.

After hearing his mother and sister report on Lady Roslin, however, Robb had lost his concerns. Roslin was a cheerful lass with a good understanding of what went on around her. She'd been unhappy in the Twins, and Robb had been disgusted to learn that most of that was having to constantly watch her more distant male cousins in their attempts to drag her into their beds whether she wished it or not. She'd managed to survive with her maidenhead intact, if not her sense of innocence, and Roslin Frey liked the North.

Having decided to stay, she'd then looked for what she wanted in a husband. Kindness, a love of children rather than just a pride in producing them, and the ability to protect her were all high on her list. Finding Greatjon's Heir possessing of all of these things as well as a keep of her own to serve as Lady in one day, Roslin had begun a charm offensive that the future Lord of Last Hearth had no defense against.

Robb had written his own father asking him to speak to Lord Umber, as the Greatjon as at war in the Vale with his liege. Greatjon had written back that it was about time that his boy got married. He'd also specified that he had no problem with the lass, as she had a decent enough dowry, but that if she was to wed into his family, she had to worship the Old Gods sincerely. Robb had passed this on to his mother, who'd been unhappy at what she saw as an unfair request and an untenable situation, but relayed it to Lady Roslin anyway.

Lady Roslin had cheerfully tossed the carved wooden figures of the Seven from her small personal altar into her fireplace. Then she'd picked the silver wire set into the altar itself out of the wood, burned the altar too, and taken the wire down to Winter Town's lone jeweler to commission some earrings. She'd spent two hours with Old Nan every day since, listening to her stories, and taken to praying in the Weirwood twice daily. Robb had dutifully reported this and knew Greatjon was currently working out the details of the betrothal with both the current Head of House Frey and Robb's father, as Roslin was House Stark's ward.

"Ser Domeric _will_ write again soon, won't he, Robb?"

"Hm?" Robb started out of his contemplation of his plate and attempt to ignore the saccharine exchange Sansa had been sighing over. "What?"

"Ser Domeric." Sansa shot him a look, her blue eyes going from dreamy to sharp as ice chips. "He will write again shortly."

"Yes!" Robb found himself all but yelping as he pulled his booted feet up to get them away from where Lady had decided to have a growl at Greywind under the table, putting his toes in jeopardy.

Lady was, as ever, the calmest and most docile of the direwolves. That did not mean that she didn't reflect Sansa's emotions. Sansa's emotions were currently caught up in one thing, and Robb knew better than to get in her way where information involved in it was concerned.

"Your betrothed is my friend and writes me often. I'm sure we'll have another letter from the Dreadfort in a few days." Robb hastily assured his sister, ignoring the way Rickon grinned at him from Sansa's lap; his expression one of pure mischief. "I'll convey your wishes for his health and that of his kin."

"And tell him I miss him."

"I will tell him you miss him dreadfully."

"Not  _dreadfully_!" Sansa protested. "Don't make me sound desperate."

"He said he missed  _you_  desperately in his last letter."

"Just as he should." A warm female voice said from Sansa's other side as a tall lady walked into the Great Hall and joined them, dropping into a curtsy as she approached. "A man should always miss his intended just a bit more than she does. It reminds him who he belongs to. Forgive my lateness, my lords and ladies, there was some confusion in the laundry."

Robb's sister and his mother let out the exact same exasperated sigh, and spoke at the same time.

"Jilla again?"

"Aye." Lady Aislinn Forrester, their other ward, frowned and shook her head. "She's not suited for the responsibility of running things there, I'm afraid. We need someone with more experience or she'll keep running to us every time she's worried she doesn't recall the way to treat fine cloth, or she's off-timed the drying process again and clothes aren't ready when they ought to be."

Robb excused himself from the conversation then and stood, pushing his bowl of porridge away and heading out to the training yard. His mother's Riverlands servants had, over time, largely ended up in fairly good positions within the household. His father's handpicked servants and Poole, the steward, were Northerners but many other positions had ended up dominated by his mother's bridal retinue.

The result of this was that their dismissal had left all of the House's ladies with more work to do. As he left her heard his mother dismissing Lady Aislinn to her own tasks for the rest of the morning, thanking her for spending her early hours so industriously. Sansa was deputed to handle the kitchens and pantry and oversee the preserve making that would be going on there all day. Lady Stark herself went off to handle the laundry and find someone other than the nervous Jilla to put in charge.

Robb spent another hour duly occupied with Ser Roderick. Putting steel to steel and refining his fighting was different now. Before it had all been about the challenge. Now, after Robb had spilled blood and with the knowledge that he'd be leaving in less than a fortnight to head west again to monitor their defenses against the continued sporadic Ironborn raids, it was different. He'd been close to death himself a dozen times in the skirmishes he'd fought. He'd killed others. He'd seen people he'd known his whole life, guards from Winterfell he'd grown up knowing, die on the steel of invaders. Sparring would never quite be a game again.

After that it was making rounds in the castle. He visited Mikken and checked up on progress made on the arrows he'd ordered prepared and the increase in armor and arms he wanted on hand to ship south to his father in the Vale. Finding good progress made, he left and went on to make his ride into Wintertown. Gwyn had taught him that what a lord hears and what his people say are often different, and while he couldn't and wouldn't skulk around like she did, he could ask and his people were usually honest with him. So far he'd picked up quite a few useful rumors from the merchants in the process.

Then it was back into the solar. Robb had received more letters. Letters were a constant source of happiness (family) and annoyance (everyone else) for Robb now that he was acting Warden of the North. One in particular left him unsure of what to do, so he wrote his father with regret to ask what he thought.

He'd just sanded the letter when Grey Wind got up from his place by Robb's feet to look expectantly at the door. Robb didn't bother waiting for the knock.

"Enter!"

"It's right creepy when you do that, Lord Robb."

Lady Aislinn Forrester entered briskly, her long legs easily stepping over where Grey Wind had decided to sprawl in her path in an attempt to get attention. Robb reflected that, if anything would give them away before either was ready, it was probably going to be the direwolf. He found he didn't mind overmuch as he got up and took the wooden tray from the tall lady's hands.

"You're a gift from the Gods, Lady Aislinn." Robb told her firmly as he looked down at the plate filled with sausage, jam-smeared bread, and fried mushrooms.

"I know." She replied cheerfully and leaned down, gently running her hands through the thick fur of Grey Wind's ruff. "I noticed your mother saw to it that you only had porridge this morning. Is this glorious beast still implicating you in crimes you haven't committed?"

"I can't figure out _how_. Your brother is no longer here to feed him things he ought not have."

Robb was too busy eating his own secretly obtained second breakfast to notice Aislinn silently slip Grey Wind a piece of bacon.

"Is Sansa's trousseau going well?" Robb asked after a moment, looking up and swallowing his food with the help of a glass of wine he poured himself, then gestured to the carafe. "Wine?"

"No thank you." She shook her head and smiled, dropping into a chair and sending her dark blue skirts swirling. Robb didn't bother to stop himself from admiring the low neckline on her gown; it must be a new one as those she'd brought with her from House Forrester were all very modest. "Sansa's nervous because a storm off of Braavos wrecked three ships belonging to the biggest cloth merchant out of White Harbor. It will drive the price of silk up considerably."

  
"Dammit. Well, now I know what we'll be speaking of at dinner." And nothing else Robb reflected glumly. "Why is she so intent to work on it? Father already decided that she and Domeric Bolton won't wed until she's five-and-ten. That's three years from now!"

"A Lady's Trousseau is a work of art that takes years, Robb. I've been working on mine since I could hold a needle and I'm nearly six-and-ten now." Lady Aislinn shot him a look that warned him this was not a subject for mockery. "If you want to please both your sister and your mother, then write to Princess Lyarra about it. Dorne is already regularly sending ships North with the bride price and we're sending them South with the dowry."

"I can negotiate funds in Dorne for her to send silk and cotton North, as they produce both there." Robb lit up and nodded. "It can come North with the next bride price shipment and such things are cheaper in Dorne."

"Yes, but the price of shipping will drive it up a bit."

"Lyarra won't charge me for shipping it."

"You're a lucky man in your sister."

"I am." Robb felt a pang. "I miss her."

"I miss Keavan and our home." Aislinn sympathized. "I worry about him alone with father. Both are dour by nature and need someone to keep them in spirits. Any word on your _gift_ to the Princess Lyarra?"

"None?" Robb breathed out, his face falling but his heart relaxing a little at being able to speak of it. "Do you think something's happened?"

"Probably a whole host of things have happened. It's a long trip. The most likely thing is that the process of journeying to Dorne as a commoner was alien enough to delay things a great deal. Caravans move slowly and guards must wait for work."

Robb nodded at that. He'd said as much to Aislinn first and she was only repeating his words back at him. Still, it was comforting to be reminded of why it would take so long to make such a journey when you weren't traveling as a nobleman with the funds to simply make the trip as hastily as possible.

Finished with his hasty meal he wiped his hands on the napkin on the tray. Then he reached out and wound his arms around Aislinn's waist and pulled her against himself. They were precisely the same height, so everything matched up perfectly. His attempt to get a kiss ended up with him being nipped instead.

"You're taking liberties again, my lord, and we're not betrothed."

"If Ser Domeric even thinks about Sansa in such a way he'll never live to wed her."

"Lady will tear you limb from limb in a berserk rage to leave Smalljon in tears of jealousy, and that's only if Sansa doesn't do it herself."

Robb snorted with laughter and looked at Grey Wind. His companion looked back as if to say that was a threat that should be taken seriously. Robb gave up and pressed his face into the crown of smooth black braids circling her head before stepping back and holding his hands up.

"I've written to Father." Robb complained. "He says I need not be so hasty."

"Well, then, I suppose you'll have to wait." Aislinn smoothed her hands slowly down the front of her dress, settling it back into place and lingering on the endless length of her thighs.

Robb swallowed.

"Father isn't Grandfather."

"Meaning?"

"You're not Barbrey Dustin."

"I'm guessing this doesn't have anything to do with her request that the Princess Lyarra send her husband's bones home now that our relationship with Dorne is better."

"No…"

"Robb…" Aislinn looked at him, her dark eyes serious. "My father would be  _furious_."

"I would apologize  _very_   _nicely_."

"Nicely."

"Abjectly?"

"And wed me  _straight_ away."

" _Immediately_. My father would  _insist_."

Grey Wind only need a pat on the head and a gentle word to decide to nap outside the door. The direwolf's presence was enough to deter the servants. Jilla the laundress, already adequately compensated with coin and planning to leave service with her upcoming marriage anyway, kept Lady Stark busy the rest of the afternoon.


	4. Domeric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of the heir to the Dreadfort...

**298 A.C. – A few weeks before Lyarra's child is born**

Domeric Bolton stood in the Dreadfort's Godswood and reached out one hand to touch the pristine white bark of the Heart Tree. His fingers left bloody streaks behind, but he didn't draw them back. The Gods had once taken a tribute of blood from their people, and it was in their name he'd dealt justice. The blood on his hands was as much their doing as his, and he wasn't sure if he was grimly satisfied, comforted, or disturbed by that fact. Either way, he rested his hand fully upon the tree's trunk, leaving behind a bloody print of his fingers and palm.

"I had wondered if I would find you here."

Domeric didn't jump or whirl around. He'd heard a figure approach. He'd know the sound of her steps anywhere, and it was with a slightly lighter heart that he turned around.

"Aunt Barbrey, I hadn't thought you'd make it for another moon at least." Domeric turned, intending to enfold her in a hug, and only got a raised eyebrow in return.

With a grin, he reached down and grabbed a handful of snow from a drift around the gnarled roots of the great Heart Tree. Quickly swiping his hands through it, Domeric soon had clean hands. Blood still lingered under his nails, but it was dry and out of reach besides. No longer at risk of staining the black cloak or gown his mother's sister wore, he quickly enfolded her into a hug.

Lady Barbrey Dustin, who had ruled over Barrow Hall since her husband's death in the Rebellion, was a tall woman. Her looks were fair but had grown hard with age. Her face was still handsome though lines were carved at her eyes and mouth. Her hair was thick, but the brown was threaded with gray and swept back into a high widow's knot that did little to relieve the harder features of the North that harmonized to find beauty on Barbrey Dustin's face.

Domeric could barely recall his own mother. He thought her hands had been soft, and he recalled that she often smelled of lavender. That was all he really could piece together that he was sure was truly her. All of his other memories of a woman in his life was his aunt, who had visited the Dreadfort frequently, and then fostered him at Barrow Hall as a page when he'd seen seven namedays.

"I've _missed_ you." His aunt still smelled of wind, rosewater, and a hint of horse. She was still wearing her woolen riding gown and heavy, mud-splattered cloak. "You look beautiful."

"Spare me the platitudes. I'm old, I'm kin, and I've been days in the saddle."

"Which shall certainly make young maidens weep when they realize how much beauty you still command after so many years and such hardship."

"So, you gained a silver tongue as well as a knighthood in the Vale, did you?"

"The silver tongue took more work."

With the sound of his aunt's laughter dancing around him, loud and a little raucous, Domeric's heart swelled. It was a bleak morning, the sun hiding behind clouds, and Domeric found himself lonely. Seeing the woman who was more his mother than his own had a chance to be brought his mood up from the dark place it had gone to in its loneliness.

"Let's go inside so you can sit down, Aunt, and have something to eat and drink."

"First, tell me what brought you before the Gods with bloody hands." Barbrey demanded in her usual uncompromising tones and Domeric felt a wave of relief.

He'd have to write to his father of this soon. Being able to talk it over with his aunt first could not be better preparation for that. He had no doubt of his aunt's love, but her honesty was a thing of cold steel and would cut anyone who faced it. He appreciated this more than he could say and, for all that he yearned to see his House and name spoken of with respect and his father's eyes turned towards him with pride, he valued his aunt's opinion more than any other.

"Father cleaned out most of my brother's minions, but a few were lingering at the edges of the forests. One was caught in the process of a rape and I saw to his punishment."

"You took his head then?"

"One of them."

Barbrey turned to look at him with a calculating eye, and then moved to sit on one of the Heart Tree's roots. Domeric did the same, sitting across from her. Above them the canopy of red leaves whispered and Domeric felt something inside himself uncoil in the cool summer wind. Neither he nor his aunt noticed that the blood he'd smeared upon the Heart Tree's trunk was long absorbed. They were used to the ears of the Gods, and to the watchful eyes of the grim face carved into the wide, squat trunk of the tree.

"Explain it to me fully, Domeric."

"The man was a toady, not one of Ramsay Snow's more prolific accomplices." Domeric reached up and rubbed his eyes, a headache threatening to gather beneath the bridge of his nose. "He'd taken to thievery after Father's justice fell down on the others, and he heard that I had been left in Father's place when Lord Stark called his banners to the Vale."

"You mean the human excrement went into hiding after Lord Stark arrived with the inoculation goats and your father had to move to eliminate anyone who knew of his… _hobbies_."

Domeric's lips thinned, but he nodded.

"He came back out of hiding once he heard Father was elsewhere."

There was no sense in denying it to his aunt. Barbrey knew from her sister that Lord Roose Bolton practiced First Night amongst his smallfolk. Or, rather, he had before his soulmate had come to him, and after her death, sporadically. Domeric found it strange that, for all his father's various evils, he wouldn't remarry. Even his offer to Lord Stark to wed the bastard-turned-princess had largely been political theater. Domeric wasn't sure if what had existed between his parents was love, knowing his father he doubted it, but _something_ had existed between the soulmates that his father seemed to esteem in memory.

One day he might even be brave enough to ask what that had been.

"Father put most of them to the sword."

"Headless men do not speak."

"And gelded men do not rape." Domeric pulled a face. "The man had committed no murder and refused the Watch. It was his choice in punishment as much as mine."

"I'm not faulting you, Domeric."

"I know."

"Nor will your father."

"I know."

"Then whose fault do you fear? Your little Stark maiden, perhaps?"

" _No_." The mockery in his aunt's voice annoyed him and Domeric frowned at her as he answered. "I just don't like the _screaming_. At least the criminals I've executed have gone fast. This one's still down in the dungeons, screeching his throat raw. He's been cauterized, so he won't likely die now, and I've got to see him to the edge of our lands tomorrow myself, so I've got at least a few more hours of annoyance left to endure. I'm tempted to write to Lord Stark and argue for the punishment of rape to be moved up to death just to avoid the annoyance of doing this again."

"I won't dispute the change if you convince him. I'll even add my seal if you so wish. The gelded ones either kill themselves later or become nuisances, more often than not. A simple beheading would be more efficient." His aunt chuckled at him, but her dark eyes were curious and assessing. "You are _prickly_ over your betrothed, though, are you not? I've heard she's more Tully than Stark. Are you afraid her Southron heart would quail to know you have punished men with your own hands in the way of the First Men?"

"My betrothed has twenty-eight stone of direwolf following her about to attest to her Stark blood, I don't think the red hair and blue eyes quite hold up against that sort of proof, Aunt Barbrey."

"I'll be the judge of that." Barbrey didn't give an inch, leaning forward to catch his pale gaze with her dark one. "Is she going to be of any use to you but warming your bed, bearing your children, and spending your coin?"

"By the time we wed, she'll be able to run my castle well." Domeric replied stiffly, then shook his head. "Aunt… I don't want to argue with you about Sansa. I want your _help_."

"So she's not even the Lady Sansa to you now. Tell me, have you anticipated the marriage vows that Lord Stark is so intent on delaying?"

"Sansa hasn't even had her moon's blood!" Domeric protested, his cheeks growing hot and his aunt laughed at him. "And you're one to talk."

Domeric spent a tense second wishing that he could recall those words back onto his tongue. Then his aunt's lips turned up just slightly. Domeric knew his aunt approved of being challenged, but it was always unpredictable how much challenge she was willing to accept or how far that approval stretched.

"Do you think I regret it?"

"I think you only regret what was stolen from you."

"I'm pleased that my sister didn't birth a stupid son." Lady Dustin replied and then stood up. "Come on. The Gods don't need to hear us bickering. I will pray later. Now, find some mulled wine for your poor, aged aunt and then tell me fully of the half-Southron Stark girl you're so intent to wed."

Domeric relaxed slightly and breathed out, grateful to know that his aunt would listen. A half-hour later they sat in the Heir's solar, a spacious room with only a few spare pieces of furniture in it, but a large fireplace with a great fire burning in it. He gave his aunt the only footstool and tried not to let his eyes linger overlong on the only tapestry in the room.

"That is new."

His aunt promptly pointed at the small banner hanging above his hearth.

"Aye."

"A fine piece of work. Whoever did it has a great skill with embroidery."

A blood bay stallion ran across a gray-green field, at its back a sunset picked out in shades of pink. All around the outside was a border of knives, touched at the edges with blood. Domeric had loved the thing as soon as he'd gotten it.

"Sansa made it for me during my time at Winterfell. It was her betrothal gift to me, though she started it before then." Domeric didn't add that the Lady Arya had insisted Sansa add the knives in a letter, or how much he liked the thought of his gentle betrothed cheerfully adding that macabre detail. The dichotomy of it was funny, as had been Lady Stark's rather nonplussed look.

"That is not the work of a fortnight."

"No, it's not." Domeric felt his lips turn up. "She confessed that she began work on it as soon as her sister's letter of the tourney reached her from King's Landing."

"Hm." His aunt's dark eyes narrowed. "Your father told me that Lord Stark approached him with a request for a betrothal. He was most pleased with the respect that showed for your House. Did the girl ask her father for it?"

"No." Domeric couldn't help the grin that began to tug at his lips. "Though she told me she wanted to. Lord Stark's exposure to the King's only son, and his frank appraisal of the chaos in the capitol was enough to convince him that he wants proper _Northern_ matches for all of his children. He said that, having met me, I was his first choice for his eldest daughter."

"So Ned Stark wants _'proper Northern matches'_ for his children? I wonder how his wife takes this."

"Lady Tully seemed to hide some disappointment over her daughter's betrothal to me at first, but she's been nothing but polite in her cold, Southron way. Then, of course, she spoke frequently of finding Lord Robb a well-dowered Southron bride." Domeric snorted. "But if you ask me? I think Lady Stark's a little cannier than she's being given credit for."

"How so?"

"She speaks of Southron matches fairly often to her children, but never her husband." Domeric ignored the sharp tone his aunt was using and shook his head, his smile turning sneaky. "When Lady Aislinn Forrester, for instance, showed up at Winterfell she couldn't stop speaking of The Rose of Highgarden around Lord Robb."

"And is her son's red head turned by these stories of Southron beauty?"

"Not a bit. Lady Aislinn has him firmly captivated." Domeric grinned. "Lord Robb's already written to his father requesting that a betrothal come about between them, and the shorter the betrothal's duration, the happier he'll be."

A spark of something triumphant and sad chased its way through his aunt's dark eyes.

"Really? What is this Aislinn like, then? I've never met the Forrester girl."

"Taller than you by perhaps two inches, with fair skin and black hair. Her eyes are blue-gray and she looks as Northern as any maiden has since the North was agog over your beauty, Aunt Barbrey."

"If history is to repeat itself, then I'd caution Aislinn Forrester to beware. Her father is not nearly so tolerant nor intelligent as your grandfather."

"He won't have to be. Lord Stark isn't his father, and what the Wild Wolf did out of passion Lord Robb will do with calculation." Domeric defended the Heir to Winterfell, who he'd befriended while staying at the keep; well, mostly befriended. Lord Robb was a rather _vigilant_  brother. "If anything, he's more his grandfather than his father. Robb's walking into this with his eyes open."

" _Hm_. We shall see."

"There's also no Southron maester whispering in Ned Stark's ear." He pointed out. "Luwin's Northern bred."

" _All_ maesters are gray rats, where they're born has naught to do with it." His aunt countered harshly but sat back with twinkling eyes. "Ned Stark's the sort to be embarrassed by such a thing."

"Aye, but that'll just move things along faster."

"True. Is the Forrester girl practical?"

"Extremely, and she's got no use for any Gods but ours and no interest in anything happening beyond the Neck unless it profits the North."

"Speaking of profit," His aunt finally changed the subject. "I noticed that the glass house you'd planned to build with the profits of your tourney has become three."

"Our glass house was less than half the size of Winterfell's, Aunt, and all of the new ones are smaller."

"And the cost?"

"I'm only paying for one. The others are a gift to mark the joining of our House with House Stark."

"Courtesy of your little redhead or the Princess Lyarra?"

"Courtesy of Princess Lyarra's bride price and my future wife's ability to turn big blue eyes on her father until he weakens to her perfectly reasonable request that the gift take the form I had most hoped for."

His aunt sat back at this point, her eyes sharp and curious.

"And was this _your_ suggestion?"

"No." Domeric felt pride rolling off him in waves and didn't bother trying to hide the smugness. "I'd spoken to her about working to expand our glass houses before Winter, but it was Sansa who went and used her father's soft heart to get me the glass for the second all on her own. She could have tried to bend him to a larger trousseau or more lavish wedding feast, but she listened to what I wanted and worked to make it a gift I would value."

"Mayhaps she's not without sense. Time will tell if she's ever truly _useful_."

"Time or seeing her fostered with someone who can _teach_ her as much."

Lady Dustin's dark eyes narrowed as she paused with her wine goblet to her lips. Domeric sat forward and let his own control over his expression drop away. He wasn't going to plead with huge eyes the way Sansa did, but it didn't mean he couldn't beg his aunt for her help in his own way. His aunt loved blunt honesty as much as his father preferred quiet subtlety. Domeric was capable of both.

"Aunt Barbrey, Sansa's got potential but until recently her mother did nothing but fill her head with songs and Southron tales of knightly valor and beauty. I love her dearly for her kindness and warmth, but I need to make sure she's a banked fire that'll hold through Winter and not a candle I'm setting out in a storm. To do that, I need your help."

"Her mother will never allow it."

"No, but her mother isn't the Warden of the North." Domeric replied and sat back, putting his feet up next to his aunt's on the lone footrest and watching her eyes narrow at him. "That honor belongs to Eddard Stark."

"Eddard Stark is a man weak enough to his wife's whims to put a _Sept_ in Winterfell."

"A Sept now empty of Septon and Septa."

"How long do you think it will be before she convinces him to bring another spy against our ways and our Gods North, Domeric?"

"I cannot speak for Lord Stark, but I know that his Heir felt personally betrayed by the actions of the Faith, and I think we both can imagine the sort of opinion that House Forrester has of the Faith after Lord Forrester's wife abandoned her children for it."

"So you would work through the Young Wolf?"

"I would tell my future wife that time spent with the aunt who has been my mother in all but name would please me beyond measure and help prepare her to be my bride."

"And you think the little girl who embroidered _that_ ," She nodded her heads towards the banner derisively. "While dreaming of knights and songs is going to have the courage or stubbornness to convince her father to send one of his precious red-haired children into the keep of a woman who has more than one legitimate grievance against his House? The glass house was _nothing_ , Domeric, and you know it. There's no lord in the North who wouldn't favor a practical gift over a frivolous one, and more glass houses means more security for his daughter in the hungry days of Winter."

"Sansa is more capable than anyone knows; herself included."

"Hmph." His aunt's dark eyes narrowed. "You've still forgotten one major problem with your plan."

"Which is?"

"Why should I want one of Catelyn Tully's spawn in my household?"

Domeric Bolton weighed several responses in his mind before offering one. He thought to say that his aunt should want to do it for the political clout alone, but he knew her pride and her anger were greater than that. He would get no help in appealing to her sense of political detachment when she would, rightly, point out that she could strengthen her own position by weakening House Stark just as well. Lord Stark's redheaded, blue-eyed children were his weak point, as was his Southron wife and her strange and hostile Gods.

He could have pointed out that House Stark owed her. They owed her children she'd never had a chance to carry or birth because of Brandon Stark's betrothal and Willam Dustin's death. They owed her honor, for hers was besmirched by a son of their House. Domeric knew that might move her further, but he doubted it would see things come to the end that he wanted. So, instead, he said the one thing he felt was truly called for.

"Please."

* * *

 

"You better not have _let_ me win, Nephew."

"Boltons never let anyone win and no-one of Ryswell blood has ever thrown a horse race, Aunt." Domeric laughed as he shoved his hair, which had come loose from its queue out of his face as he allowed his stallion, Ryl, to drop down into a trot and then a canter as they grew closer to Winterfell's walls. "You should know that better than anyone."

His aunt shot him a fierce look at that. Still, he counted a victory to his name even if he had lost the race. Ryl had the greater lung capacity between himself and his aunt's mare, but the fine black horse his aunt was riding was better on the sprint, and the race had been a short one.

"I've agreed to nothing, Domeric Bolton, and I would have you remember that."

Domeric bowed in the saddle slightly, and they moved onward with their party. He'd made all the proper preparations at the Dreadfort before leaving. Half of his urgency in seeing to matters of justice before he left was the fact that he wanted to make another visit to Winterfell. This was both for matters of loyalty and politics as well as more personal reasons.

Domeric's father had made sure he was seen as once more answering his lord's call and putting his men loyally into harm's way in the Vale. Domeric needed to do the same for Robb on the Western Shore. If his future lord was riding out to deal with more Ironborn raids, Domeric wanted to do the same. Moreover, he wouldn't be seen doing less than the others.

House Bolton's reputation had always been dark. They were feared, rather than respected. Domeric, who'd spent his childhood longing for his father's approval and respect had grown into a young man who yearned to see his House itself respected. To do that he had a great deal to repair in their immediate history, which his bastard brother's behavior having come out as it did had wreaked havoc on. There was also the long line of historical matters to deal with, balancing out family pride with recreating how House Bolton was seen by the other Northern lords.

To do that he refused to give an inch as far as their prestige went. They were the second most powerful House in the North. Lord Stark himself had asked to betroth his eldest daughter to Domeric, and Dom hadn't missed the significance of that. The Warden of the North wished to bring their Houses together, and Domeric was going to make sure no-one forgot that.

As such he wasn't willing to be left out or pushed by the wayside. Something he knew could easily happen with Robb Stark. The Young Wolf had already assembled a small 'pack' of his own featuring one of Lord Karstark's sons, Smalljon Umber, and the future Lord Forrester. If Domeric wanted to make sure he had a place amongst these other young lords, he needed to carve one out for himself and that meant battle and blood at their sides.

 _"Which means,"_ Domeric silently reminded himself, _"You can't forget where you are and stare at Sansa like a calf-brained idiot. Robb Stark may be seriously thinking of deflowering Aislinn Forrester to force a marriage, but he's guarding his own sister's honor the way a miser guards his last gold dragon."_

As they rode into the courtyard, his eyes sought out a tall, slender form in a pretty blue dress; her hair a sheet of beaten copper across her back.

_"No calf-eyes."_

Lady Sansa Stark was, at twelve-namedays-old, a vision of girlhood poised on the edge of maidenhood, standing at the brink of a youthful beauty that would one day be praised above almost all others of her generation. She wasn't there yet. A hint of childish roundness still clung to her cheeks. Her body was slender, overlong, and still developing. The promise of that beauty, however, was there in the tall, willowy redhead and if that hadn't been enough to leave a young knight with his heart racing, then the fact that she was smiling at Domeric as if had ridden down from the heavens themselves to bring her the sun was.

 _"Stay strong."_ Domeric silently encouraged himself, straightening his back and very aware of his aunt's eyes on him, Sansa, and everything else around her. A matter that could have been simpler. Domeric was starting to think his timing had to be completely off; Sansa and a few servants were the only ones in the courtyard to greet him.

"Lady Dustin, Ser Domeric, may I offer you bread and salt?"

"As it's traditional to do so, you may." His Aunt replied, allowing a servant to take her reins and swinging down from her horse with the practiced ease of one set into the saddle while still toddling.

"Where is your brother, Lady Sansa?" Domeric asked instead, swinging down and letting his Aunt Barbrey take bread and salt first while he took Sansa's hands in his own and pressed a kiss on her gloved fingers.

Sansa's cheeks reddened and while she kept the welcoming smile on her face there was something in her eyes…

"My brother, Lord Robb, was closeted in an important discussion with our Lady Mother and was slightly delayed. He bid me welcome you in his place and see to your refreshment so that he could receive you properly during the evening meal."

"Interesting." Barbrey Dustin drawled, looking about. "Tell me, girl, is the Lady Aislinn Forrester _also_ part of this meeting?"

"Lady Aislinn laid down earlier with a sick headache." Sansa replied with just the right amount of concern, though her blush gave her lie away where her tone of voice did not.

"She has my utmost sympathy." Dorne wasn't as dry as his aunt's voice. "I recall being in a similar condition when I was around her age."

Sansa's blue eyes showed a trace of wary confusion. Domeric blessed her for the wariness, as that would get her further with his aunt than the sweetness he loved about her. His life had been a cold one, and though he loved his family dearly and was proud, he couldn't help for hoping for a better, warmer family to call his own than the one he'd been born into. Sansa, Domeric felt in the depths of his soul, was the key to this happiness as well as a lever he felt he could use to pry his family's reputation free from the past.

"I can only hope that I avoid similar indisposition, then, as it seems common in ladies of Northern blood." Sansa replied and Domeric required every ounce of his considerable willpower not to turn and gape at her.

Sansa was _innocent_. Surely she hadn't just made a jape at his aunt's expense? She most certainly wouldn't have made one that reflected so poorly on ladies of the North!

Domeric hastily looked over his betrothed's face. She was still blushing a bit, but her expression was one of pure innocent confusion. Even his aunt's narrowed eyes could find no fault there. Domeric relaxed slightly as his aunt changed the subject, giving exacting instructions for the care of her horses and quizzing Sansa on the quarters allotted for those who'd come with them. To Domeric's relief, as he took bread and salt, he found that Sansa had a ready answer for all of those questions. She was briefly tripped up by Lady Barbrey's question over whether, as betrothed kin, they'd be housed in the Family Wing of the Great Keep, but Domeric stepped in before his aunt could pounce further.

"Given we're not yet wed, I hardly think that appropriate."

"Yet isn't a betrothal a promise given honestly between two families, or two people, of _equal value_ to words spoken before the Gods in marriage?" There was that razor's edge to his aunt's tone that spoke of Brandon Stark's shadow. "All the world knows how dear Lord Stark holds his honor."

Domeric always felt a flare of anger at that. While the rest of the North liked to dismiss his aunt's claims as a foolish girl in love who'd given her maidenhead up unwisely to a wild young man, Domeric knew his aunt better than that. She'd been young once, yes, and he didn't doubt she'd been wild with love for Sansa's long-dead uncle. Her father had also pushed her towards the Heir of Winterfell with both hands.

 _None_ of that changed the fact that his aunt had been born to haggle over fine details and tear the meaning from the words of others. Domeric was sure that his aunt's tales of Brandon Stark having promised to wed her were true. The Wild Wolf's honor was more in question, in Domeric's mind, than his aunt's. He'd shown a willingness to commit at least one colossally stupid act in his life. Why not be petty enough and _stupid_ enough to bed and dishonor an important bannerman's daughter and break an oath to a maiden in one stroke? That was even without taking into account how Rickard Stark's Southron ambitions likely influenced his own decisions…

"Oh, certainly!" Sansa agreed instantly, however, her blue eyes wide and sincere before flicking over towards Domeric longingly, then back at his aunt.

Domeric, who knew Sansa did not know the details of the tales of his aunt and her uncle, was about to step in. Fortunately he didn't have to. Lady saved him from that fate quite nicely.

His aunt's response was everything he could have ever hoped. It was even better knowing that the young direwolf was only half-grown. His aunt froze, going stock still and staring in shock as four hundred pounds of direwolf trotted up on silent feet, her long, lean body gleaming with what Domeric thought was freshly brushed, luxuriant silvery fur. Her golden eyes looked out at everything with amber curiosity and Domeric was delighted when, after stopping to slide under Sansa's hand, Lady walked forward and leaned towards him.

"Dom!"

Domeric ignored his aunt's strangled cry and held his hand out towards the muzzle and long white teeth of the direwolf. Lady solemnly leaned forward and sniffed his hand. He held still and, to his pleasure, she ducked her head down and pushed it under his hand. Obligingly, Domeric Bolton scratched the direwolf's ears as though patting one of the legendary creatures wasn't the easiest way in the world to lose an arm.

"So, is Aislinn still slipping Grey Wind sausage and bacon?"

"Yes, though I wish she wouldn't." Sansa wrinkled her nose, forgetting to be the proper lady of the castle for a moment.

"I would think anyone around such a creature would want it well-fed." Barbrey said and Sansa looked back, suddenly growing pink again.

"Well, it has other effects."

"It gives the wolves the most putrid case of wind imaginable." Domeric replied cheerfully, deciding that he was going to relieve his days as his aunt's page and be awful and childish for a moment; no-one else was on the deserted walk towards the Guest House and he needed to distract his aunt. "I pity Lord Stark when he returns to his solar, Aunt."

The look his aunt gave him was not amused, but he could tell she was fighting a smile at the thought. Sansa changed the subject by asking if he'd received any recent letters from the Vale. Domeric did likewise and the rest of the walk to the Guest House was uneventful.

* * *

"Well?"

Dinner had been an interesting event. Domeric had enjoyed the meal, which was a matter of hearty game stew, bread, a hot salad, and rich custard tarts. Beyond that, he'd enjoyed Sansa's company and gotten a bit of a contact high off of his aunt's deep delight at Catelyn Stark's discomfort with life in general at that moment.

Lady Aislinn Forrester had worn a modest Northern gown of black wool with white ribbon-work embroidery around the belled sleeves and wide skirt. It was a very pretty dress. The fact that it was pretty and complimented her figure and her long, lean, build nicely didn't change the reality that the high neck couldn't quite cover the livid bite mark on her neck.

There was no doubt in Dom's mind how that bite had gotten there, either. Lord Robb Stark, future Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell, had a strawberry red bruise behind his right ear that could have only come from a lady's teeth and tongue as well. There'd also been a subtle, almost untraceable change in the Young Wolf's posture.

"Robb Stark's as smug as an ermine alone in a henhouse." His aunt proclaimed, but there was something soft in her eyes. "The boy looks too much a Tully."

" _But_?"

Barbrey Dustin shot her nephew a sharp look, but instead of quailing at it Domeric quietly offered her a soft, knitted blanket for her legs. She held his gaze for a few moments, daring him to blink. Dom refused and, afterwards, she smiled crookedly and reached out and accepted the blanket, draping it over her lap as they both sat in front of the fireplace in her guest quarters. Then she reached up and gave his ear an "affectionate" tug.

"Thank you. You're such a _considerate_ boy."

_"Aunt Barbrey…"_

She laughed at him, but he saw a softening in her brown eyes as she turned to stare down into the flames.

"Coloring aside, he's not without the Wolf's Blood. That much was apparent. Did you get anything from your pretty little redhead on the matter?"

"Sansa's aware that things went further than proprietary allows with her brother, but she's not aware of the details or what it fully means." He acknowledged. "Mostly she's just happy to see me."

"That much is true." Barbrey Dustin sniffed. "At least she knows a good thing when she sees it. The question is whether she'll be any good for you."

"She handled her mother well enough."

"Our future lord handled that nicely when he sent a raven to his father proclaiming his intentions and begging forgiveness for his actions before he allowed his mother to learn of it."

"No." Domeric disagreed. "He subverted his mother and overpowered her, as is only right given he's the Stark in Winterfell right now and she's just his father's wife. Sansa handled her lady mother by diverting her with talk of our wedding, her trousseau, and details about Lord Hoster Tully's health."

"Mayhaps."

"That least was well-done, Aunt, and you know it."

It had been. Domeric had been pleased and surprised to watch Sansa retrieve a letter, as if by chance, from her pocket and begin asking her mother about passages of it. The letter had been from Riverrun and it had more than served its purpose.

"I should have guessed Lyra Mormont would already be with child. They're a fertile family." His aunt changed the subject. "Caught herself a nice fat trout, the she-bear did, and now she's making sure it's safe to enjoy her meal. How in the world a Mormont woman is going to survive as Lady Paramount in the Riverlands, I don't know."

"She'll lop the head off anyone who tries to stop her."

"That kind of tactic doesn't alway work, as pleasant as it is."

"Which is why I believe I will do well with Sansa as my wife." Domeric maneuvered the conversation back where he wanted it to go.

" _Really_?" His aunt gave him such a flat look he leaned forward to be closer to her as he spoke.

"I'm a Bolton, Aunt Barbrey. I may intend to restore my family to its rightful place of dignity and honor, but I'm not forgetting where I come from. I have the stick in hand." He let one of his knives slide out of his sleeve and down into his hand, gleaming in the firelight. "What I need is the carrot."

His aunt snorted.

"She's the right color for it."

"She's a Stark, Aunt." He argued. "She's got plenty of teeth and they're sharp enough. What she needs is to learn how to use them."

Barbrey Dustin shot her nephew a look that was half-respect and half-annoyance. Then she leaned forward and took his chin in her hand. Her nails pricked the soft skin underneath his chin and at the edges of his jaw uncomfortably, but he didn't pull away. He didn't flinch or blink, either. He let her hold his pale gaze, something few people could do, until she was satisfied and leaned back.

"I'll think on it."

That was a better reaction than Domeric had hoped to get after only a few hours in Winterfell, so he accepted it as with a kiss on his aunt's cheek and a statement that he was going in search of his own rest. He wasn't sure he'd fooled her. In fact, judging from the look she gave him he hadn't at all. Domeric was willing to accept that.

He left his aunt to herself and went back to his quarters. Once there he retrieved his harp. The instrument was a beautiful thing of dark, polished wood. He would admit it didn't have the cachet or the valet of the weirwood harp that the Forrester family possessed. That thing was old beyond years and a very storied instrument. It was still, however, a very good harp and more than adequate for his purposes.

It would likely have been more romantic if he'd crept about in the bushes or slunk through the shadows. He was a guest, however, not Bael the Bard. There was no reason he shouldn't do what he was doing.

A pair of golden eyes blinked at him from the shadows in front of him as he crossed into the courtyard beneath the windows he was seeking.

"Lady?"

The golden eyes narrowed and a low rumble growled out at him from the shadows.

"Shaggydog?"

Rickon had spent the better part of fifteen minutes engaged in an impromptu ' _challenge_ ' with Domeric in a space hastily cleared to much laughter after dinner. The servants in the Great Hall had been delighted to watch as Domeric accepted the boy's challenge for his sister's heart and they faced off with hastily acquired wooden spoons in place of swords. The Lady Stark had been disapproving, but her Uncle had convinced her to let it be. The Blackfish, Domeric noted, was a hell of a knight and lived up to his reputation while managing to be a surprisingly doting great-uncle at the same time. One day he wanted to be that kind of grandfather.

Still, Domeric had conceded the match after losing his spoon intentionally, much to Rickon's delight. Having done so, however, he'd refused to give up Lady Sansa's hand. Rickon had declared that he would show mercy after Sansa plead for him, and agreed to think about having Domeric as a brother in much the same tone that Domeric's aunt had allowed that she would consider Domeric's request that she take Sansa into her household for a while; grudgingly. The effect was all the same in that Domeric knew Rickon's black direwolf to be the wildest, but also one of the less likely to bite him due to its master's fondness for him.

The shadow kept growling. Domeric blew out a breath and took a careful step backwards into the torchlight behind him. He also eliminated the possibility that the wolf was young Bran's. The boy's responsibilities as a squire kept him tired, as Dom's once had. His wolf would be curled up across his door as the boy slept. That only left one option.

"Grey Wind, as I am a good and dutiful bannermen to your master I sincerely doubt you're going to maul me without his leave."

Domeric had picked up the habit of talking to the wolves like people from Sansa. She spoke to Lady as if she were a friend and confident. She'd once told him that she felt the wolf more a part of her soul than a pet or even a friend. Domeric had his own theories about that, buried and giddy in their implications and secret triumph, but he was too busy having a staring contest with a mythical predator more than twice his weight to consider them.

"What about _with_ his leave?" Robb Stark's slightly mulish voice came out of the shadows and the stocky shadow glared at him with accusatory blue eyes.

"Well, before you have him tear me limb from limb, might I know the reason, Lord Robb?"

"I would think having you skulking about beneath my sister's window in the dead of night would be reason enough."

"I could take it as a slight that you impugn my honor so despite the betrothal between myself and Sansa and our acquaintance, but I'll suffice to say I believe I can count on the Old Gods to note your hypocrisy and Keavan Forrester to settle any scores left by my demise."

It was too dark to see if Robb Stark blushed, but there was no mistaking his grimace. Grey Wind, who hadn't really done more than growl with a bit of showy menace, had padded off to sniff around the grass growing tall in a patch by one wall. The grass rustled wildly as the big creature lunged and a rat squealed out its death to a profound crunch as the direwolf's tail wagged.

"I trust you well enough, Ser Domeric." Robb Stark huffed, finally, and stepped forward. Then he went on in a plaintive tone. "Do you _have_ to do this? You're already betrothed. There's no point you need to make, nor do you have to earn her hand."

"If I was doing it because I have to, it wouldn't mean much, would it?"

Robb Stark shot him a sharp look and Domeric shrugged and offered him a crooked smile.

"I enjoy it."

"You spent too long in the Vale. We don't _do_ this sort of thing in the North."

"Actually, according to Greatjon the Mountain Clans still serenade their ladies in courtship."

"They also occasionally _steal_ them, for all that they say they don't."

Domeric bit his tongue on any comment about First Night. He wasn't going there. It was too deep a source of his own shame to think on the old custom. His father… He wouldn't think on it. It would change nothing.

"People do a lot of things they say they don't." Domeric shrugged.

"And yet you expect me to trust you standing outside my sister's window in the dark?"

"No."

Robb Stark stared at him.

"I expect you to sit in the corner with Grey Wind and glare at me while I play just like you have every other time I've done this."

"I _promised_ my father I would keep Sansa properly chaperoned."

"A promise we both know you'll keep, Lord Robb."

"Stop being so likeable." Robb Stark issued one final complaint, half-an-order, but Domeric counted it a victory when he saw he'd left the young lord exasperated rather than angry or suspicious.

Stepping forward, Domeric raised his harp and struck the opening notes of Queen Nerys' Lament and watched as the curtains at Sansa's window open and her delighted face appear. The way her eyes, blue as the Weeping Water ever was in flood, light up and gleamed down at him and her hair turned into a fiery halo as it was backlit by candlelight was more than reward enough for his efforts. When he tempted her into singing along with his playing after two songs, it was even better. The Gods had, after all, seen fit to grace him with talent for music but no voice to sing it with. Sansa more than made up for the deficiency, for all that she'd been too embarrassed by comparisons with her older sister to try it much in public.

Five songs later Lady Stark peered out her own window to tell him it was more than late enough for the Lady Sansa to go to bed. Domeric offered her a courtly bow and thanked her for her tolerance of his limited talent with the harp and noted another conquest made. The Southron Lady of Winterfell had not forgot enough of her own childhood stories to be immune to knightly courtesies, and Domeric Bolton had fought hard and won an ally in Eddard Stark's wife.

Domeric was in such a good mood he even went over and woke Robb Stark back up so he could go inside and find a pillow more comfortable than his direwolf. Of course, doing so required a bit of caution given the direwolf the young lord was sleeping on. That was fine in Dom's opinion. How could he possibly pass up the chance to poke the future Warden of the North with a stick?


	5. Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samwell Tarly has made it North and is reflecting upon his situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long!

**298 A.C. – Just before the North gets word of Lyarra's child being born.**

"I haven't done you any harm, have I, Tarly?"

Sam shook his head at Smalljon Umber's rough voice. The question, for all that it was growled in the deep rumble of a Northern accent, was honestly asked. It was more courtesy than anyone else had ever shown him when knocking him down in the yard. Then again, he'd found that the two things that characterized Smalljon Umber best were, oddly enough, his ability to kill someone barehanded and a strange balance of gentleness that went along with it. That had never been Sam's experience of warriors before.

"No." Sam noticed with clinical detachment that the strained wheezing of his voice gave lie to this statement.

"Gave your lungs a thump? That's another thing you'll need to learn to throw off. Someone'll stick you with a sword while you're laying there, if it's a real fight."

Sam nodded this time, but didn't waste his breath. He also waved off Smalljon's hand, which his back and every muscle in his body pleaded with him to take, and slowly rolled over onto his side. He felt, he decided, as a beached whale must feel. He still managed to roll over, get up to his knees, and then get to his feet again.

A bell sounded and Smalljon's expression turned from murderous to merely ferociously pleased. Sam had learned a few days into his stay at Winterfell not to interpret all of Smalljon's expressions by normal standards. With his black beard growing bushier by the day, it seemed, and his fierce eyes and rough features, Smalljon couldn't help looking like a terrifying savage.

"That'll be the noon bell." Smalljon stated unnecessarily and turned towards where a man-at-arms waited, to hand the man his blunted tourney sword and do the same with Sam's, which he picked up off the ground in another of his small gestures of kindness. Then he wiped his hands on his pants and happily picked up a fat scroll from a bench. "Thanks for the music. Lady Roslin had none of her own and was missing her Southron songs."

"It was no trouble." Sam moped at his own brow with the sleeve of his rough woolen shirt and smiled at the larger man as his age mate wandered off, music in hand, to find his betrothed.

As Sam made his way to the bench, he picked up the canvas wrapped bundle of clothes he'd left there. Though his breath frosted in the air and his ears stung with the cold in the courtyard, Sam was a sweaty mess. It ran in a river down between his shoulder blades. His hair was dripping as if Dickon had shoved him into the mill pond again.

Sam spared a moment to be mournful for his little brother. Had Dickon lived, Sam might have had some other path. He knew his father wouldn't allow him to be a maester, but he'd had hopes he might join the Faith. It also allowed for its members to apply themselves to scholarly pursuits…

The Plague had killed that hope, just as it had killed Sam's oldest sister, his brother, and his mother. House Tarly had been decimated by the Faith, and Sam had to admit that even had Dickon lived, he wouldn't have been able to stand going into it. Not when they'd purposefully chosen an attempt to discredit the only cure for such idiotic reasons.

They could have twisted things around to their own benefit, Sam was sure of it in his bones. He could think of several ways that the Faith could have taken credit for it. The first and foremost was by absorbing a few of the practices still related to the Old Gods that the smallfolk kept anyway. Most smallfolk were pious in the South, but they were also illiterate and clung to oral traditions. That meant that outside the pomp of the septs, they still told the ancient stories and still practiced a few of the holidays.

Just look at White Harbor! Sam had seen how House Manderly had changed the Faith when they'd come North. They no longer paid any tithes or had any contact with the Faith's hierarchy in the South. Their septons and septas - if you could call them that - were untrained, at least in the formal sense. They seemed to rely wholly on the texts related to the Faith and simply handed religious duties about to members of their congregations within the city. Many of them had picked up and integrated the Old Gods directly into the religion one way or another, claiming them as some kind of special aspect of the Seven that communicated from the Earth directly.

Sam had been fascinated by it, and was studying it, but without any real intent. His father's sense of betrayal had been complete. By the time his father was done, the Tarly lands would be the most devoted followers of the Old Gods South of the Neck. Personally, Sam felt he was done with Gods outside a bit of philosophical discussion now and then.

Sam visited the large public bathhouse favored by the servants. It wasn't private and he'd been embarrassed at first, but it was worse having to call for a bath after every spar and have to wonder what the servants were saying. He'd just adjusted his schedule a bit to finish sparring when no-one else would be in. That and he'd stopped lounging in the bath; a great sacrifice when his entire body felt like one huge bruise and the hot water Winterfell had so plentifully of felt like heaven.

Clean and changed into his clothing, Sam looked at the 'mirror'. It was really just a particularly large stone in the wall that had been polished with grease and thousands of years of effort until the dark gray stone was reflective. It did its job, however, and Sam could look at himself if he chose.

There'd still been no magical transformation. Samwell Tarly was still fat. His eyes were small, pale, and a little too close-set in his face. He had more than one chin. His dark hair was not particularly thick, curly, or anything else fit for a song.

Sam was not one to look at the worst in a situation, however, unless to attempt to plan around it, and the Plague had taught him a lesson he thought he might never have otherwise learned. Sometimes you simply must get on with it. There were situations that Sam had found he couldn't think around, and when those came… Sam had learned you had to face them head-on, and you couldn't get through them just by taking a deep breath and surviving. Sometimes, Sam thought with that mix of fear and distaste, you have to fight.

Sam hated fighting.

Turning away from the mirror Sam noted that, if there were no surface changes in himself, there were at least some interior ones. He'd been at Winterfell for no small length of time now. In the moons since he'd arrived, the warm shirts and tunics he'd bought in Wintertown had grown tight across the shoulders and through the arms. He might not be losing any fat, but he was gaining muscle.

Sam took it as the closest thing to victory he'd ever get and went to his other 'lessons' with a better frame of mind. Not because of the muscle; his father did not supply him much in terms of income and he would have to pay a servant to alter his clothing. Well, he could ask one of the Ladies of House Stark, but Sam absolutely didn't want to do that. Just picturing pretty Lady Sansa or statuesque Lady Aislinn with a tunic that looked more like a tent across their lap was enough to make him turn red with mortification. Far better to pay a servant. Mayhaps he could save gold and offer lessons in letters?

"Sam? If that's you, get in here, please."

The polite but deeply exasperated tone that greeted him did what little else could in the North's miserable climate and Sam's generally miserable situation in life; it made him smile.

"Lord Robb?"

Sam carefully stepped over the tail of the direwolf that had decided to sleep near the door, shooting Grey Wind a cautious look. The great beast was not aggressive or vicious in the sense of a dog, Sam had found. Instead it had a strange intelligence to it that made it's occasional bursts of ill-temper seem almost human. Sam would have loved to study it if he weren't so afraid of the thing. Robb and his small group of friends said it would warm to Sam in time, but he would rather keep his fingers than risk them passing it meat from his plate as Smalljon occasionally did.

"Sam, explain to me in as few words as possible how a foreign exchange rate is worked out."

"Usually it's just by weight of materials involved, such as the gold, silver, and copper in coins." Sam perked up, curious. "Unless we're discussing the iron coinage in Braavos?"

"We are."

"Is House Stark considering taking out a loan from the Iron Bank?"

"No." Robb shook his head, making a face at the idea. "I need to ride to White Harbor to mediate between one of our merchants and a Braavosi merchant over a matter of payment and we both know the Iron Bank will weigh in. They've a branch in White Harbor and Lord Manderly wrote to tell me that a representative of the Iron Bank is supposed to be the one speaking on behalf of the Braavosi merchant."

Sam nodded, feeling himself perk up at a challenge he was suited for. He no longer ran from martial training. It would do him no good when even he could see there was no choice to be had in the matter, as he'd learned painfully on the road between Horn HIll and Highgarden. Sam didn't want to fight. His desire not to die, however, was even stronger than that.

Sam tried never to think about the bandit's blood on his hands and face, though. That still made him feel sick. Instead he turned his mind to something he did enjoy and pulled out a seat across from the massive lord's desk in the solar where Robb Stark had taken up his father's duties.

"When are you leaving?"

"Tomorrow."

Nodding, Sam ordered his thoughts and then launched into a proper explanation of how the Iron Bank and those that dealt with them determined the relative worth of their iron coins. This ended up taking more than an hour. At Robb's request Sam quickly put quill to paper and wrote down his summary while they discussed the case.

"It seems fairly plain, as such disputes go." Sam noted. "Both merchants are young and foolish and didn't sign a contract."

"Many in the North don't use paper contracts. If your word alone is not of worth, what will paper do to change it?"

"Not a good theory when dealing with the Iron Bank." Sam made a face. "Or anyone else, really. People lie."

"Even Northerners." Robb frowned and took the scroll from Sam and added it to what Sam saw was a packed saddle bag hanging from the back of his carved chair back. "I'll find out the truth of it all in White Harbor."

"I'm sure you will."

Then Robb Stark demonstrated another of the differences between fostering in Winterfell and living in Horn Hill. Smiling crookedly at him, Robb Stark shook his head. Then he acknowledged that skills existed that had nothing to do with battle.

"I'd have you ride with me, but I need you to ride with Lord Domeric down to meet with Torrhen Karstark at Moat Cailin." Robb rubbed a hand over his face and complained. "I never thought I would be complaining about the lack of people in the North who read High Valyrian."

Sam couldn't help the delighted smile that spread over his face.

"I'd rather ride to White Harbor too."

"Unfortunately Maester Luwin must stay here and the only member of my family who saw fit to learn the language from him is now a Princess of Dorne, so you'll just have to contend with the mosquitos and lizard lions and translate Torrhen's scrolls for him."

Sam didn't bother to suggest the scrolls be sent to Winterfell for translation, then the translations sent back to Moat Cailin. He'd done so once, and it had been rejected. He had no desire to go on such a hard ride on horseback given how uncomfortable he found Northern saddles and the big, fierce horses of the region. Especially in a party comprised of Ser Domeric Bolton and a number of his family's warriors.

A small group of Ironborn had thrown together a stockade in the Flint Cliffs just above the Neck. Robb Stark had literally just returned from Blazewater Bay and dealing with Ironborn raiding there. While it was slowing down considerably, and the raiders getting more ragged and desperate when they did appear, it was still a problem. Robb Stark would have undoubtedly ridden down himself to deal with the issue again, but anything involving the Iron Bank or Essosi trading partners required a careful touch and a ranking member of a Lord Paramount's family.

As such, given the betrothal that existed between Lord Domeric and his sister, Lord Robb had shown trust and honor in his future kin by asking that he settle the Ironborn incursion issue this time. Sam thought that this was a fine political decision and had agreed instantly to it. Lord Bolton himself was in the Vale, fighting with the King and Lord Eddard Stark to quell the unrest there due to the Arryn succession crisis, but he would no doubt be eagerly listening for any hint his House was done wrong or not shown proper respect while his son was left as its Head in the North.

"I don't mind going to Moat Cailin, truly." Sam offered. "The engineering on the castle is very interesting."

"It is!"

Sam felt his lips pull up into a smile, ever surprised that the young warrior and lord his own age was smiling at him. That was yet another detail carefully omitted from his letters to his father. For all that Sam hated the weather, at times was endlessly frustrated with the bluff attitude of the Northerners, and was confused by an entirely different set of rules related to courtesy and appropriate behavior for a young lord his age… He was now becoming more and more intent on stretching out this fostering as long as possible.

"You're the one who'll get to enjoy looking over the progress, though, Sam. I want sketches."

"Easily done, Lord Robb."

"Good. Don't fall off your horse."

"Don't get seasick."

Robb Stark stared at him in shock and Sam spent one terrified moment wondering if he'd overstepped. He was not one of the Young Wolf's 'pack' of young Northern Heirs and warriors who rode out and fought. He was a guest in Winterfell and any hint of shaming his family and his father might demand he return to Horn Hill. A place that, with his mother dead and no Dickon to distract his father, was even more miserable than it had ever been in his youth.

"Kiss my freckled half-Tully arse, Tarly!" Robb Stark burst out laughing instead, obviously appreciating the jab against the fact that he might look like a Tully, but he'd certainly not inherited the love of the waters that went with the red hair and blue eyes. If anything, he'd been cursed to inherit Ned Stark's rather persistent seasickness.

"I'd rather not. Lady Aislinn is likely better with a sword than I am."

Robb winced sympathetically at that and surprised Sam again by patting him on the shoulder.

"We'll keep at it until you're confident you can hold your position and get out alive."

"And I'll be satisfied with that." Sam agreed sheepishly, wishing he hadn't spoken. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, Lord Robb, you, Ser Roderik, and Smalljon have been very patient-."

"Don't be satisfied with it, Sam. It's not about that. Just keep going." Robb advised him. "You hate to fight, so don't think of it as fighting."

"Oh?"

"You're too fat to run away properly, so think of this as learning to run over them instead."

"There are so many problems with the logic of that that I don't know where to start." Sam sighed, wondered if he'd overstepped again, and got a wolf's grin in return.

"Make a list then. You can swat the mosquitoes in the Neck with it. Are you packed? Domeric may arrive at any time."

"He'll want to stop and greet your sister-."

"Don't remind me." Robb Stark glared and muttered something that might have been 'stupid harp' and possibly 'poncy ass' but there was no heat in it.

Sam waited out the growling, noting that it was far less intimidating when the young lord was doing it than when his wolf rose and joined in. At least Grey Wind was still asleep, or feigning it, against the wall.

"I'm packed." Sam agreed, and frowned. "How did Lord Torrhen get a book on geometry from before the Dance with Dragons?"

"One of Cregan Stark's daughters married into House Karstark. Apparently the book was a gift from House Targaryen in thanks for putting things in order during the Hour of the Wolf and he gave it to his daughter. It's been sitting, unread and untranslated since in the Karhold library."

"But it's been a hundred-and-sixty-seven years!" Sam was horrified at the thought. "Is he even sure it's about geometry?"

Sam looked at Robb Stark's sharp grin and decided that he was very tempted to revise his opinion of liking the other man.

"Have you talked to your little brother lately?" Sam asked instead.

"Hm?" Robb looked surprised. "Rickon?"

"Lord Bran."

"He's fine, isn't he? Ser Brynden keeps him busy."

"He and your great-uncle asked me to find them some books on old Northern legends yesterday? Before that they spent quite a few hours with Old Nan. I was just wondering if you knew what it was about." Sam explained. "I was curious why an established and honored knight like Ser Brynden would be so interested in Children's Tales."

"Oh, that."

Robb Stark's laugh filled the room as Grey Wind got up and stretched, before coming over to lean against his person's hip and fix Sam with an amber-eyed look that made him nervous. Sometimes he wondered if the Starks' direwolves weren't somehow looking through him. Could they smell cowardice? Did it make them hungry? These were questions Sam felt important to know the answer to.

"After the Old Gods blessed that goatherd in the Vale and told him to share the inoculation he went to Ser Brynden first. You know that, though."

"I do. Has Ser Brynden developed an interest in the Old Gods since then?"

"I think my brother started it." Robb chuckled as he threw his saddle bags over his shoulder and head over, opening the door before Sam could rise, turn, and do the same. Sam thanked the higher ranking man and proceeded him out of the room. "Bran's always had a thirst for knowledge and a wild imagination, you see. Plus, his climbing is driving the Blackfish up a wall of his own, if you take my meaning."

"I don't know why anyone would want to climb like that! I dislike heights a great deal when my feet are steady on top of a wall, let alone clinging to the side like a lizard."

"It's Bran." Robb Stark answered, as if that said everything, and Sam wondered what it was like to have family that understood you like that. "This is likely Ser Brynden's way of distracting him. Plus, what's wrong with a love of history or an appreciation for our ways?"

"That makes sense." Sam agreed. "I'd like to read those books myself, when they're done with them. I've never gotten a chance to really examine history North of the Neck from any perspective that didn't originate far to the South."

"Maybe you'll write your own book someday." Robb Stark agreed and Sam found himself genuinely smiling as he went his separate way so Robb could find his family and his new wife and bid them farewell for the present privately.

As he left he thought about what his motivations would be and decided Ser Brynden Tully was merely an exceptionally intelligent man. House Tully's reputation had deeply suffered with the reveal of Lady Lysa being dishonored and then her womb ruined by ridding her of the babe. Then there was the matter of the Riverlands itself looking terrible with the fake weirwood plot. Now, when House Stark had instituted some very wise measures to clean up the political mess - getting rid of the Septa and Septon, Robb marrying a bannerman's daughter and avidly pursuing heirs of his own, Sansa Stark being betrothed to the second most powerful Northern House - Ser Brynden was reinforcing that. By demonstrating that he was more than a famed warrior and he esteemed the Old Gods and the history of the North and was educating Bran Stark in that while making him a Southron style knight, Sam could see how it would reinforce House Stark's position further and help Lady Catelyn out as well.

Something in the very back of Sam's mind niggled at him, however, and he decided he'd begin to look into such things as well. As soon as he could, mind you. First he had to survive the biting insects of the Neck.

* * *

"Is that a letter from your intended?"

Sam jumped out of his skin and, had it not been written on such fine parchment, would have torn the letter in his hands in half. Turning red in the face he glared at Domeric Bolton. The young knight smiled back with the blank pleasantness of expression he did so well and Sam folded the letter up and tucked it beneath the stiff, uncomfortable boiled leather armor he was wearing over the chainmail shirt that was the current bane of his existence.

Well, right after his horse. The big strawberry roan was supposedly as placid an animal as was available in Winterfell's stables, but Sam knew that wasn't true. It was the most placid animal next to the brown and white mare that Sam would have preferred, but it very definitely did not have the ambling gait that the Westerlands bred horse had. Patches, now that Sam had 'progressed' in his riding lessons, was once more reserved for Lady Sansa's use as she worked to improve her own riding.

Everyone acted as though Sam should be endlessly pleased to have progressed past riding a 'ladies' horse. Sam just wanted back on an animal whose gait didn't seem designed to rattle every bone in his body and flatten his balls via bouncing in the saddle. His father might have wanted to see him wed soon and produce sons that might be more useful in Randyll Tarly's opinion than Sam himself was as soon as he could, but if he had to keep riding Northern horses with Northern saddles much longer Sam wasn't sure if marriage was going to matter.

Dimly, Sam wondered why his father simply hadn't pressed for a match between himself and the Rose of Highgarden. His father wasn't young, but he wasn't decrepit, either. He hated Sam. Randyll Tarly had treated his wife with fairness and not beaten her, but he hadn't loved Sam's mother. Surely he could have started over now that he was a widower?

It made no sense to betroth Sam to the most beautiful, well-dowered woman in the Reach, at least not beyond the simple politics of suring up Tyrell control of their lands by reinforcing kin-bonds with bannermen. Just the thought of the situation made him ill. While he wouldn't turn down a beautiful wife, he could smell the mockery coming and couldn't imagine the woman would want anything to do with a husband such as himself.

"It is."

"How fares she?"

"The letters are all banalities, Lord Bolton." Sam replied, tired and cross after his days in the saddle as he let himself sit heavily on a rock near where they'd made camp and built up a fire. At least the fire was warm. There he'd found a bright point in the day's journey. It was over, and the fire was warm. "Lady Margaery does not know me, and what she's seen of me has not endeared me to her. She writes only the things expected to be written between the newly betrothed."

Ser Domeric Bolton, Sam was learning, was a contradiction a wise man would be wary of. Oh, he was sure Ser Domeric didn't think of himself as such. The man was still enamoured of the idea of knighthood itself and with the dream of repairing his family's reputation. He was also perfectly capable of fighting and killing in cold blood without giving it much thought.

Sam was not as comfortable around Domeric Bolton as he was around the others who were part of Robb Stark's group of friends. Smalljon Umber had an innate kindness. He was also, bluntly, not stupid but just uneducated and open enough that Sam was always several steps ahead of him in thought. Torrhen Karstark was intelligent, but so innately honest Sam never wondered what the older man was thinking at all. He hadn't yet met Lady Aislinn's brother, as he'd arrived at White Harbor a day after the Heir to the North's hasty wedding, so he could form no opinion of him.

Domeric Bolton struck Sam as dangerous. Moreover, he struck Sam as not knowing how dangerous he was. Like a newly hatched adder that had never bitten anything, Domeric Bolton was all pretty scales and good manners and better intentions. Sam had a creeping feeling at the back of his neck, however, that he might be a very different person if truly roused to anger.

As such, even as cross as he was, Sam kept his voice glum rather than anything approaching to gruff. Had it been his father or any other man, they wouldn't have regulated that. Sam, however, had long ago come to terms with his craven nature. He'd just been taught by the Plague that even that must run to the end of its string, and at the end your only choices were survival or death. When that moment came, craven or not, all that mattered was your own actions and not the accolades of a man's knightly peers.

"Then it's your job to draw her out."

"I am afraid not all of us can woo a lady with song and knightly virtue, Ser Domeric."

Domeric Bolton sat down at the other end of the log and Sam noticed he had a dead hare in hand. Sam didn't care at all how he'd come by it. All he cared about was what he knew was coming next. Determinately, Sam turned his face away from where Domeric Bolton had pulled a knife and began to skin the hare.

"That's true, Lord Samwell."

Adding to Sam's discomfort was the fact that Domeric Bolton managed to hold his gaze with those pale, milkglass eyes while he did it. Who could skin a creature entirely by touch? Moreover, who could do it with a razor sharp belt knife and not cut themselves?

"Please, just call me Sam, everyone else does, Ser Domeric."

"Then you must call me by my name as well."

"I'd be honored to, thank you, Domeric."

Sam's manners, at least, did not fail him. He still kept his eyes firmly up and away from the rabbit. When the big, aggressive black hound wandered up and he caught to motion of Domeric throwing the hare's entrails off to the dog, Sam swallowed hastily and began to examine the flames instead. The nervous, queasy feeling forced his tongue to move again, though he'd have rather held it.

"I do not understand why my father does not remarry."

"My father swore he wouldn't when my mother died, for she was his soulmate. I was surprised when he asked for the Princess Lyarra's hand, a few months before her Mark came in, but apparently he knew he was going to be refused. Were your parents soulmates?"

"No, just a normal arranged marriage." Sam offered, turning over that bit of information curiously and deciding it was either done to plumb Lord Stark's disposition over betrothing any of his children, or to check to see how cautious Lord Stark was with House Bolton in general. "They weren't close, either."

Sam didn't add that his father was 'close' to no-one but Dickon. Sam hadn't been treated particularly well by his little brother. His father had encouraged the opposite. That said, Dickon was his little brother and Sam missed him. If nothing else, had he lived Sam might have found a life he was better suited for than trying to figure out some way to take the seat at Horn Hill without ending up dead by either his father's wrath or someone else's.

"Then I don't know why your father doesn't remarry, but I do know that maidens do not become fond of those who do not pay them attention." Ser Domeric stood up, apparently done with the hare, and Sam averted his eyes as the bloody, skinless thing was handed off to the man hanging a cauldron of water over the fire.

There were no servants in their party. They took turns with such tasks. Moat Cailin was not in any way finished beyond the outer wall, but Sam was still looking forward to arriving there.

"All women want to have court paid to them." Ser Domeric went on, his tone suggesting a man far older than his years and surprising Sam enough to look up and watch as the man wiped his hands off with a handful of damp grass he'd torn up from behind the rock he'd returned to sit upon beside Sam. "Whores, a potter's wife, a woodcutter's daughter, it doesn't matter. Women do battle with words and pay in all matters, in the coin of time and attention."

"Did your father tell you that?"

Ser Domeric grinned suddenly, a fierce flashing of humor in a pale, handsome face, currently half-hooded by his long, loose, red-brown hair.

"No, my Aunt Barbrey did."

Sam nodded at that, now more interested. Ser Domeric definitely knew how to woo a lady. Lady Sansa was herself young and a bit too innocent to take seriously even in her delight at her betrothal. You couldn't fail to acknowledge, however, that all of House Stark's ladies liked Ser Domeric. From Lady Stark herself, who approved of his knightly gallantry, to Lady Aislinn who was as Northern as you got, to the most ancient of House Stark's female servants, all of Winterfell's female population adored Domeric Bolton.

"Primary sources are the best." Sam made a weak joke and the smile remained for a moment before Domeric's expression became bland again.

"They are, and never underestimate my aunt."

Sam hadn't met her, but he took the man at his word and nodded, waiting to see what else he would say.

"Really, that is all there is to it. Pay attention to them, care about what they care about, and don't break wind at the table."

"Who does that out of the nursery?"

"I have no idea, but I've been reliably informed no woman, anywhere, tolerates it with anything approaching grace."

A warrior approached then, one of the large party they rode with. Sam got up and drifted off to empty his bladder. He had nothing useful to add and the warriors he was surrounded by made him nervous. Right now it was just Domeric Bolton and fifty of his men. Ser Domeric would meet with two other parties, one House Ryswell and another from House Dustin, and take command of them when they got closer to their destination. They'd gotten word that the Ironborn 'settlement' was larger than they thought and growing more fortified.

Sam would be very happy to be in Moat Cailin when they settled it. He had no idea how Robb Stark and Smalljon could have been angry at missing it. Yes, he understood Robb Stark's dedication to duty, but resolving the conflict in White Harbor before it escalated into conflict with the Iron Bank itself was the best possible excuse. No-one in the North would begrudge him sending a trusted bannerman to deal with what was still a relatively small Ironborn issue in a desolate stretch of coastline when Braavos was heavily depended on for winter trade in salted fish and Pentosi grain. Especially when all of the North was well-aware that House Stark's words were growing more relevant with the turn of every moon.

After he'd finished his rabbit stew for the evening and contented himself with sitting silently alone, Sam did what he always did: he thought. Sitting alone and thinking was a pleasant enough activity. It also gave him time to plan, and Sam had learned during the Plague that plans mattered. He'd never have gotten to Highgarden had he not taken the time to disguise himself and his sisters as smallfolk making the pilgrimage to get the cure. He'd had to think of the logistics of the time it would take to walk, of carrying food for himself and his sisters, of a dozen other things, and then keep it all hidden from his father.

Now he had to figure out how to get through a life where he was grimly certain he'd never be free of his father or his father's antipathy. If his brief episode of bravery in saving his sisters had been a stay of execution, it would never be approval. That meant he needed a plan.

Taking out the letter from Lady Margaery Tyrell he read it again. It was bland to the point of painfulness. Just a cheerful letter going on about how the Gods (he noticed she didn't specify Old or New) had brought them together at their father's lawful will. It mentioned the weather in Highgarden. It asked about the weather in the North. It complimented Horn Hill.

Attention.

Sam bit his lip. He knew nothing about Lady Margaery Tyrell save she was beautiful, accomplished, and well-dowered. He couldn't argue against anything Ser Domeric had said. Women did like attention. Who didn't? Everyone liked it when their interests were pandered to.

Curling up on the cold, hard ground in his bedroll that night, Sam fought against the cold by keeping his mind occupied. In his memory, he wrote out the expected return letter. He couldn't say much about himself without disgusting her, he was sure… but he had no shortages of questions about her he could ask. He was also surrounded by the North, which was strange and new. There were tales to tell there.

No, Sam decided, he couldn't be dashing. He could, however, learn anything. The Lady Margaery had to have some interest beyond piety, hawking, riding, archery, embroidery, and the other things a lady learned of in the South. He'd find out what those interests were and he'd learn everything he could about it. Even if all she ever did was tolerate him, if he became a pleasant burden that would be something he was sure they could both work with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the Margaery/Sam betrothal seems really abrupt here, recall that several months have passed so Olenna's been negotiating with Randyll this entire time. She's also likely plotting to kill him once Margaery's safely got a child of that line and secured Horn Hill's allegiances to House Tarly. Whether Margie and Olenna decide they like Sam or not shall have to wait.


	6. Lannister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House Lannister has its own share of fatherless sons, in one form or another.

**298 A.C. – Just before the word of the birth of Princess Lyarra’s child goes North.**

 

The rain drummed at windows and fell hard upon rock, wind whipping around corners, howling like a hellhound on the hunt. The great black wolf-dogs of the demons of the Seven Hells were counted hungry beasts, never satisfied with the souls they rent in the underworld. The septons, or some septons at least, claimed they still walked the world and hunted the unwary in dangerous weather and when no moon or stars were out at night. They only hunted in  _ pagan _ places, of course, unworthy and unholy because they were unconsecrated by the Faith of the Seven. As long as you paid your tithes and attended services you were safe.

They were safe from the demons of the weather inside the stone walls of Casterly Rock. Thick bronze shutters were rolled into place to cover glass windows and balcony doors and lashed closed with strong rope, heavy bolts, and bars. The darkness inside was meant to be a safe one, and the Rock remained an impossible fortress to ever conquer. 

“From the outside, at least.” Tyrion Lannister breathed out, tone frustrated. “Any demons  _ we _ create, we must handle ourselves, mustn’t we, Uncle?”

“Such is the way of the world, Nephew.”

Kevan Lannister didn’t let his exhaustion or his worry color his tone. He never did and sought never to do so. He knew himself to be far from a brilliant man, and he was not an ambitious man, but he knew his worth and he knew greatness when he saw it. He’d known it since birth in his elder brother, and part of him felt deep pride in the trust that his Lord and brother showed in him. The other parts wished dearly to be in King’s Landing serving with Tywin and guarding his brother’s back rather than attending a difficult, thankless, and hopeless task. 

When Tyrion didn’t answer him, Kevan looked back at his nephew. Of all of his brother’s children, Tyrion was the one he felt best able to help their family, at least when he could be moved to. Cersei was the most beautiful, Jaime had once had  _ great _ potential, but Jaime had chosen a white cloak over a red cloak. 

Tytos’ sons all had their strengths. Tywin’s were obvious. Gerion had never met a man he could not befriend. Tygett was a brilliant warrior.  Kevan possessed an excellent memory and methodical mind and he turned it on every problem he faced with equal dedication. Tyrion Lannister was but one. He didn’t attempt to change or even needle his brother over his lack of appreciation for his second son’s mind, as Genna did. His sister was more intelligent than he was and was one of the few who would challenge Tywin. It grieved Kevan that Tyrion could not accept his own place in life so easily; it would have been easier on his nephew’s heart. 

“Yet don’t we make the world as it is?”

“I am afraid I did not study philosophy as you have, Nephew.” Kevan replied and breathed out, finally asking a question of his own. “Tyrion, how much have you drunk today?”

“A great deal, but not nearly as much as I intend!” The mismatched eyes, one black and one emerald, flashed up at him in the candle light an Kevan held in a wince. 

It wasn’t at his nephew’s sluggish, jerky movements. Nor was it at the strong reek of alcohol that rose from Tyrion. Kevan had spent his life around soldiers and was not appalled or surprised by a bit of drunkenness. What disturbed him was the mix of emotions in those contrasting irises. The black was a bottomless pit filled with something unreadable green all but burned him with hazy self-mockery. Kevan had to try. It was in his nature to try, and no-one could do aught about their natures.

His father had taught him that. Tytos Lannister was a good man. He’d done his best. Kevan had loved his father. If only he’d been able to trust and respect him as well. Sometimes a whisper of thought came to the back of his mind, to wonder what the world and his family would have been like, had Tytos been as strong as he was good. It was only a thought, though, and one no stronger than the man it was about. Tytos had been the man and father and lord he was. Like Kevan, his nature dictated his life. That was merely life as it was.

“It would be far better for the family and for yourself if you drank less and sought to lose yourself in duty instead. Your father may have sent you from King’s Landing, but  _ I _ would not refuse your help.”

Once, even a year or a few months prior, Ser Kevan Lannister knew that such an invitation would have pushed the drunken haze away. His nephew  _ yearned _ to prove himself. He genuinely wished to help family and there were none more loyal in returning a kindness or demonstration of respect, it did not matter how small.

“A wise man would not be so eager for help from a wine-sodden half-man whose own father sent him from the capital in shame.”

Kevan chose not to comment on the fact that Tyrion’s dramatic and sudden shift from extremely useful work in the Crown’s finances to blatant self-destruction would have led to anyone with sense sending Tyrion away from the capital at such a delicate time. It wouldn’t have done either of them any good to point it out. 

Tyrion’s behavior  _ had _ been shameful. Public drunkenness was not proper for a lord, especially a lord of House Lannister now when they must repair so much damage done by Cersei and her son’s actions. Kevan hadn’t heard the full story, but apparently Tyrion had even argued with  _ Jaime _ about… something. What, Kevan did not know, but he was shocked. His nephews had ever been thick as thieves, and Jaime his younger brother’s protector and hero.

The candlelight did Tyrion Lannister few favors. Kevan’s nephew’s face was squashed and strangely proportioned as always. The scar crossing it from his time as a prisoner of the Mad Lady of the Vale did it no favors, either, though Kevan looked upon it kindly. His nephew had proven his courage. Still, he looked sinister in the flickering lights of the glass-enclosed candles in the library. There were only three present in the vaulted, dark, windowless room deep in the Rock’s stone. Two stood on the table, lighting the large book open in front of Tyrion. One was in Kevan’s hand, casting his own heavy features into harsh relief.

Kevan searched for words to convince his nephew to take up  _ some _ responsibility when he realized Tyrion was not going to speak to him further on his own. It was not a fruitful search as he could think of nothing new to say. Tyrion had been with them nearly as long as his  _ great _ -nephew, and to almost the same effect. The only difference was that Tyrion’s refusal to be useful came with damage to no-one beyond himself. Kevan found that, for now, that was enough and turned towards the door. He had many other things to attend to and Tyrion was old enough to manage his own affairs, even if he did so badly.

“I shall leave you then. If you wish some duty to occupy your time, Tyrion, come see me.”

“Good luck, Uncle.”

“Thank you.”

Kevan left, his final words sincere even if his nephew’s had been wry in the extreme. If there was luck to be had, he’d certainly accept it. Talent was good, skill was better, but no knight who’d ever been upon the field of battle would ever question good luck. It was too rare and essential a gift.

_ “Now, if only my kin were not running so short of it.” _ Kevan thought in exhaustion as he set about his other tasks for the day. He’d made the effort to find Tyrion. He’d spoken to him and reminded him of his duties. Genna, Kevan knew, would have done it better, but her hands were entirely full putting together the care packages and organizing the necessary relief efforts that would follow this storm. There was always damage following a big storm off of the Sunset seas and this one had been blowing for two days. Lannisport would need attention, as would many a farmer’s cottage and shepherd’s shack on the coast.

“Maester Throm, when the storm is done I want four men to ride directly to the Lannisport Guild Hall as well as the other two nearest. The Miner’s Guild will likely have already begun their own efforts in relief after the storm, and we should coordinate so we do not waste resources.”

“Your sister, Lady Genna, already made such arrangements.”

“All the better.” Kevan nodded once, missing the steady presence of their own maester. The jumpy young man of two-and-twenty they’d received in replacement from the citadel did not know his work as well and had a habit of coming to shadow Kevan when he did not know what else to do with himself. Kevan allowed it as the boy didn’t get in the way and was learning to be of use, but it was another small annoyance in a sea of them currently encumbering the knight.

“Ser Kevan, I had… I had thought to work some changes on the Crown Prince’s lessons, with your approval?”  
Throm’s words caused Kevan to pause, and then encourage the young man to go on. 

“The prince has a… a very active mind, but this leads him to dislike long tasks.” Throm was, at least, very tactful as he phrased carefully the idea that the boy who was meant to be king had the attention span of a sullen gnat. “He also has limited patience for things he believes his father lacks interest in, such as reading and numbers.”

“Those things are a large part of lessons.”  
“I would, with your permission, focus further on the structure of government and the history and traditions behind it.” Throm was a tall young man, a head taller than Kevan who was himself tall, but he was thin with a bobbing sort of walk and a projecting apple in his throat that bobbed wildly if he was nervous. Kevan noted he was nervous now. “It might give him more of a sense of… involvement… in the lessons.”

“A good idea, but I am more concerned with his respect for the traditions and institutions.” Kevan was not a man of delicate speech himself. “I would have you concentrate on that as well, if you believe you can find a way to engage the prince and remind him that those traditions protect the  _ king _ as much as his  _ subjects _ .”

“I shall emphasize the connection with King Robert and his own well-known honor and battle prowess.” Throm promised, then swallowed again, Kevan having to fight to keep his own eyes off of the bobbing of his throat. “Is the prince showing progress in the training yard? It is where I heard his best time was spent.”

“The prince has talent, should he wish to realize it.” Kevan frowned and dismissed the maester as he closed the conversation. “I go to see him now.”

Kevan could not help thinking of the boy sadly rather than with irritation in that moment. He firmly blamed Lyanna Stark for the grief they were suffering. Kevan had met Rhaegar Targaryen many times. He was a good man, calm, thoughtful, and kind. He’d been nothing like his mad father. Had Lyanna Stark not turned his head, then Kevan was sure that  _ Cersei _ would have. The Stark girl was pretty, but Cersei’s beauty at six-and-ten had been like the rising of the sun. Had she but been at Harrenhal then Westeros would not have been saddled with a useless king upon the Iron Throne, their family would not have put nearly four-million gold dragons into his maintenance, and Cersei’s mind would not have been so grieved from abuse that it turned to cruelty and, potentially, madness. Nor would the crass, blunt, and lush blood of their current king weakened House Lannister’s blood so in their eldest child. 

Kevan spared a prayer that time in religious contemplation in a place far away and safe from the King had done his niece well. That she would come back and focus on her duty to provide the King an heir other than her eldest son. He did not believe the reports that King Robert’s health and behavior had improved at war. There was too ready a supply of drink and whores available in any army camp, and Kevan sadly felt that the sooner King Robert Baratheon drank himself to death, the sooner the Iron Throne could be stabilized by his brother. Kevan’s only worry was that Tywin’s health was not what it once was and that Kevan himself could not be in King’s Landing to help his brother further.

With Jon Arryn dead and Ned Stark vowing to remain North because of a promise extracted from him by the late Lord Arryn, Tywin Lannister was again Hand of the King. Kevan found it insulting that his brother was  _ acting _ Hand, rather than having been officially appointed as such, but it gave Tywin the power to begin stabilizing a dynasty wracked by death, plague, and debt. Thankfully the war in the Vale had only lasted a few months; succession squabbles could be endless and costly, as the Blackfyre Rebellions had proven. This one had been bloody but short-lived. Kevan wished he’d been part of it, rather than fighting what he felt was a useless battle in a war already lost.

Casterly Rock was large enough, and had been lived in so long with so many tunnels and chambers carved out if its stone, that it had many chambers for purposes that would normally have only been attended outdoors. One such existed near the guard’s interior barracks; where they drew in times of bad storms and the like. This was necessary as the bronze shutters could draw in lightning to the outer chambers even as they protecting them from wind and rain. 

The training chamber was lit by brass oil lamps and crude torches. Brass mirrors to reflect the lights hung upon the walls on heavy iron hooks. They were mobile and the large mirrors were frequently moved around the quarters of the Rock into interior rooms that had the most people. It kept the servants busy, but Genna had long had them well-organized, as had Joanna before her, and Kevan’s mother before that. Only during the times of his father’s mistresses had the mirrors remained static and the darkness oppressive in places where people gathered during storm.

It was with this thought in mind that Kevan was helplessly drawn into the past as he looked down at what progressed below him. Fine, round gravel from river beds had been brought in and laid a hand’s width deep upon the indoor training chamber’s floor. Here, upon this softer ground, squires, knights, and men-at-arms trained. Above them, on a broad balcony, observers could stand. How many times had his father stood and smiled down upon his sons here as they learned their early forms of arms and sparred with each other? How many times had Kevan watched his nephew or his own sons with his brothers at his side?

Joffrey Baratheon’s golden curls had been tied back from his face, but still gleamed brilliantly under the light of the torches and lamps. He had a fire-hardened oaken training sword in his hand and had been dressed in the usual gambeson worn for such training. The padded wool jerkin would save him from most injuries, but he’d come away bruised, as all squires should be to learn the cost of a poorly executed defense or badly thought-out attack. Nothing seemed  _ real _ until it had extracted some price to you, and Kevan thought to himself that there was no better demonstration of how a life without consequences could destroy a man or even the potential of one than he saw before him.

“I am the  _ Crown Prince _ I order you to cease this - this idiocy and fight honestly!”

“ _ That is not fair, it is not fair, it is not right!  _ I am a prince and will be a knight and you should _ fight me like one!” _

“ _My_ _father_ is the greatest warrior the kingdom has ever known!”

“ _ I _ won, I  _ won _ , stop lying, that was a fatal hit! It would have killed you and I  _ will _ kill you for your disrespect!”

“No! No, no,  _ no!” _

The dull crackling of a shower of gravel preceded by the hissing thump of an object thrown at the floor was the most minor of progress, but Kevan would take it. Cersei’s son no longer threw his sword at those he fought with, or the backs of those smaller than he who were in the training yard. Kevan had allowed him two verbal warnings before, age be damned, he’d taken the boy of three-and-ten over his knee and publicly whipped him by belt for his undignified behavior.

“Is there a problem, Joffrey?” Kevan raised his voice and called out, its pitch flat and polite and he wished again he could convey the ominous  _ power _ in his tone and gaze Tywin could.

“They’re  _ cheating!” _

“No, they are  _ winning _ .” Kevan explained, his tone even. “It takes time and years of effort to gain great skill, and if you pay attention, you too shall win.  _ In time _ .”

Joffrey’s hair was bright but matted with sweat and he was gasping and shaking with every breath. Kevan knew the boy’s schedule as well as his own, perhaps better, and he couldn’t have been at practice more than a half-hour. Joffrey was not skilled, but he was at least  _ fit _ . Instead the clenched fists, sweat, and shaking were again signs of his complete lack of mastery over himself and his impulses. It was his anger that took his breath away, not exertion. 

“I am going to be  _ King _ one day and then no-one shall ever beat me!”

“You are not king today.” Kevan replied, not bothering to walk down upon the field. “You are my squire, and you are remiss again in your duties as well as your training. You have never cleaned nor fetched a piece of my gear nor tended my horse for you cannot be trusted with such tasks. You fail your spars not because of dishonor in your opponents, but because of impatience and lack of self-mastery. You will continue to train as you are now for two more hours, and then you will go to the schoolroom. Any refusal shall be met with punishment… and the King informed that you are shirking your duties and failing in your training.”

Joffrey’s face went red, and then white and sullenly the boy walked over towards his discarded sword. The wooden blade returned to his hand and Kevan noted with pleasure that the boy at least no longer needed gloves. His hands were toughening, if no other part of him would do so. Kevan kept his eyes fixed on his nephew through two more bouts with the guards. Both were skilled men, though Kevan knew himself better. He was withholding matches against himself until Joffrey reached a level of better skill; he wished to make it an achievement he could praise the boy for, but so far praise was in short-supply for his great-nephew. The boy simply could not control himself and Kevan was not going to reduce the pressure on the child. He had the raw talent, buried though it was behind a lifetime’s spoiling, but he had no  _ patience _ . Such was why he ended up on his arse again in the first round, and in the second curled up, his hands clenched around his belly after an elbow knocked the breath out of him.

His mind played backwards through the years. Tytos had  _ loved _ his children dearly and been a good father to them in so many ways. Never had a day gone by without a warm word, without concern, and without encouragement. No matter how important business was elsewhere, Kevan recalled that Tytos had always found time to shout encouragement towards his sons upon the training fields.

It was a sad reflection on his father’s faults as well. Tytos had been Warden of the West, Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, and Lord of Casterly Rock. He had possessed far too many duties to lavish such attention upon his children, but he had anyway. It had led to their House’s near-ruin. 

Had it not been for Tywin, their house might have fallen entirely. He would never forget the shame of watching a young Steffon Baratheon march in with the King’s knights from the Crownlands and Stormlands to set down some rebellion of his father’s banners, or his father’s near grovelling in appreciation of that fact. For Kevan it was watching as Steffon Baratheon accepted those thanks gracefully and deflected them with warm booming laughs that Kevan would always remember. He’d seen the difference then, between a joyous man who could lead and one who could not. For Tywin… it was the laughter itself that had been tainted.

Kevan had made it a point to never laugh or shout from the balconies overlooking any of the interior or exterior training yards as his father had. Not at his younger brothers, nephews, or sons. He spoke instead, raising his voice just enough to be heard, but he did not cheer and he did not offer any kind of booming critique. In this he followed Tywin’s lead as in so much else, though his brother tended towards entirely silent observation. The gold-flecked green of Tywin’s piercing eyes alone could convey approval or disapproval without any assistance from expression or voice. 

None of them had ever  _ needed _ the correction Joffrey did, however, and Kevan was largely at a loss. The boy refused to learn and he nursed resentments like a drunkard did cheap wine. Sour and bitter though it was, it seemed the boy thought it was his very life’s blood. Thinking of his niece, once so beautiful, playful, and bright… Kevan did not often pray, but he thought it best to light candles and make offerings to the Mother that Cersei found peace in her heart and a fertile womb. Too many years in an unhappy marriage had soured the bright girl she once was, and the loss of her children had damaged her further. To the Father and the Smith he’d pray for his brother. He’d ask his wife to pray as well, Dorna had a gentler soul and perhaps the Mother would hear her on both Cersei and Tyrion’s account.

Sad as it was, as Kevan had stopped praying for his father after he’d realized it would do no good in changing him, Kevan would ask for no prayers for Joffrey. He would continue to work to try and reform him as was his duty, but he was out of prayer. A letter was due to the Vale, to tell the King that it would be best to consider the boy’s training unsuccessful in the short term and likely the long term as well. Another, far longer, letter would be sent to Kevan’s elder brother. 

Tywin must know that Kevan did not believe Joffrey’s madness could be ameliorated with training or controlled in adulthood. Aerys has at least been a well-meaning fool for years in his youth. Joffrey knew nothing but impulse after his wildness and lack of guidance during the Plague. There had been episodes from childhood showing there was something fundamentally wrong with him as well. It was shameful to say it, but he would be best sent to a quick death in the cold of the Wall before Joffrey brought more ill-fame upon his family, or worse. The last mad king sparked a rebellion that toppled the Targaryens. Seven above knew what such a fundamentally weak and cruel boy as Joffrey might manage.

“Tywin shall know what to do.” Kevan spoke quietly to himself, his faith in his brother worn and tired, but unshakable. He’d been fatherless long before he lost his father, and he’d learned that when difficult times came it was best to turn to the strongest man you knew for help. Even weakened by the plague, Kevan had faith in his brother. Whatever the cost, their family’s name would  _ not _ be dragged into shame again, and order would prevail. He was sure of it.

 

* * *

 

Tyrion Lannister waited a few moments with his posture languid and wasted, more poured into his tall scribe’s chair than sitting upon it, and then his uncle’s hard boots drummed away into nothing down the endless corridors of Casterly Rock’s stone innards. One breath, two, and the dwarf made a miraculous recovery. His green eye sharpened, the haze of alcohol vanishing from it. His back straightening as his perch upon the chair became poised and his posture coiled with repressed energy. Had Kevan Lannister stepped closer to his nephew, he’d have smelled his breath and detected on it only faint traces of the rather large breakfast he’d had earlier. It was his clothing that smelled strongly of wine. Ser Kevan had not stepped closer, however, and remained unsuspecting.

“Bronn, what do you make of that?”

“Yer Uncle’s got the sense to know when shite’s about to turn nasty.”

“Isn’t shit always nasty?”

“Aye, but ye can step back out of the way of the splatter, if ye take my meaning.” The sellsword snorted. “Yer nephew ain’t going to live to be king at this rate.”

“A general relief to the realm, I’m sure, but  _ not _ my problem.” Tyrion’s response as quietly malicious as he slid down from his perch, taking his candles and keeping one for himself as the sellsword walked out from the darkest shadows of the large room and took up the other.

Bronn’s materialization was ominous, but his expression was one of wry good humor as he accepted his light. He was dressed in a padded leather jerkin over new steel mail. His boots were fresh as well, and added to his sword were two new daggers, including one with a golden handle and bits of amber set in it that had pride of place at his belt. Service to Lord Tyrion had been good for the sellsword, but that seemed secondary to the sharp light in his dark eyes. Bronn was a hunting animal, and had been since he’d scrambled for life on the streets of Fleabottom as a boy. Now he was on the hunt; a lurcher surrounded by rats. Tyrion was amused to imagine himself a stubby-legged terrier leading him onward.

“Only a total cunt would be fool enough to go out in a storm like this.”

“Or a cunt and his well-paid prick-at-arms, yes?” 

“Oy, I’m the prick now, am I?”

“Tall and everready aren’t you?”  
Bronn let out a near-silent snort of laughter at Tyrion’s coarse humor and followed along behind him as Tyrion left in the opposite direction his uncle had taken. Ten yards down the corridor he pushed aside a tapestry to reveal one of the unornamented wooden doors that marked the servants’ hallways. What followed was a series of staircases going further and deeper into Casterly Rock itself, until service doors were left behind for iron bound doors, marked with heavy locks and so thickly made Bronn had to fight to open some.

“Where’d you get the keys?”

“When I was a lad I begged my father to send me on a tour of Essos as second sons of our house often went on.” Tyrion offered as he worked to open a particularly difficult lock with one of the many keys set upon a broad steel ring he’d produced from the back of his tunic, wrapped in linen so they didn’t rattle. “Instead Lord Tywin chose to have me survey the sewers and cisterns here. I was given a full set of keys to the bowels of the keep to do so and felt it might be prudent to press them in wax and have copies made.”

“This is  _ almost _ a quarter of why yer my favorite employer, Imp.”

“The gold being the other seventy-five perfect.”

“Slightly more than that.”

Tyrion shot a sharp, unfeeling smile back at the mercenary as he got the troubled lock to open and they passed deeper into the endless, zigzagging, passages that worked their way down further towards sea level.

“We’re not really going out into that mess, are we?”

“No, but be pleased. You’ll not have to attend the cleanup of this storm, either..”

“Never say no to less work for the same pay.”

“You’re paid to keep me alive.” Tyrion shrugged. “Some days are easier than others.”

“Think someone’ll try and slip a blade between yer ribs down here?” Bronn held his candle up and stared into the darkness, then looked nervously at the remaining height of the taper. “How the fuck are we getting back if these things burn out?”

“There are torches aplenty in a storeroom not far from here.”

“Nice t’know, but I’d rather know what the fuck we’re doing down here.”

Tyrion didn’t respond. In the tiny pool of candle light the dwarf kept walking, Bronn behind him. The sharpness of his teeth scraping against the inside of his dry mouth focused him, bent him to his task and away from  _ thinking _ . At this point, overthinking couldn’t do him any favors. The endless whirl and click of the gears of his mind at work had to slow, it had to become more mechanical, methodical. He’d been sent to the Rock so drunk and miserable and self-destructive that everyone, including his father, was almost idly waiting to see him  _ finally _ drown himself in a wine barrel.

Tyrion found himself splitting in two on the way back. The parts he’d divided into were divergent as the color of his eyes and the strands of black that could be seen here and there at the back of his neck among the pale blond of his hair. On one hand, in the back of his mind, was that part of him that had been alive and awake since he was a boy of three-and-ten. The heedless god of wine and tits was there, ready to take over if called, but also rested subservient to a new master. 

Tyrion wasn’t quite sure who this new master was, either. It was some part of himself. Tyrion wasn’t going to try and deny that. What it was, however, was  _ unfamiliar _ . Tyrion felt like there was nothing left of the innocent boy he’d once been, even his most tender memories and old scars torn open and bleeding by the comment of a cousin eight generations removed and a poor relation at that. A fight with his brother, however, seemed to have closed them in some way.

_ “Not closed, cauterized.” _ Tyrion thought. He felt… burned. It was the only word. Like a castle walls bearing scorch marks after a siege. How the entire floor of the Great Hall that held the Iron Throne was littered with glassy marks from various wildfyre spills hardening it during Aerys II’s mad years. Whatever new side to himself was emerging was as fragile as black iron.

There was a Valyrian steel blade at Tyrion’s belt. He’d won it while gambling with an Essosi man, an old warrior friend of Thoros of Myr who’d come and gone a few years before, living in the Red Keep at Robert Baratheon’s pleasure. When he’d taken it to Tobho Mott to have the weak hilt rebound after winning it the man had given him some advice that reverberated in his head now.

_ “Beware black iron!” _ The master smith had told him.  _ “Just because it is brittle does not mean it cannot cut, and just because it is not red does not mean it is not hot.” _

Jaime wouldn’t talk to him of Tysha. With Gwyn Parren’s ridiculous words playing in his mind, annoying him,  _ eating _ at him, Tyrion had finally gone to talk to his brother. He’d thought that it would set it to rest, put the demons away again, or at least calm them to where he could drown them in wine. Jaime wouldn’t talk about it at all, though. He’d defrayed it with sympathy. He’d deflected it with the harsh humor they often shared, and Jamined had ended with a plea from a man who never pled.  _ “Shouldn’t we just let old wounds close, brother?” _ What had begun to eat at Tyrion, however, was that his brother wouldn’t look him in the eye.

Tyrion hadn’t spoken to his father. Why expose himself to mockery? Why  _ trust _ Tywin Lannister? Tyrion could still hear her sobs, feel them shaking her body as he…The door slammed closed in his mind and Tyrion pushed it away. He let the black iron in his mind draw down like a curtain. A portcullis guarding  _ something _ going on in his head he wasn’t yet sure of.

“Bronn, what’s it like to be an orphan?” The words slipped out of his mouth of his own accord.

“What’s it like to have kin?” Bronn snorted. “Can’t answer without something to compare it to, I suppose.”

“Try.”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“I’ll let you have the wine I’m pretending to drink rather than hiding the bottles for later.”

“Deal.” The mercenary grinned and Tyrion looked away into the dark in front of them. It retreated from their candles, and then rushed back behind them both like a living thing; ever encroaching, always following. “... Hard, I’d say? Nothing else much beyond that. Yer on yer own. Food, shelter, whatever you need, it’s on yerself and nobody else. Sometimes ye might get a handout or some help, but ye cannae count on it so it don’t really matter, if you know what I mean?”

“Yes.” Tyrion thought of his eternal reaching, the everpresent quest for approval, honor,  _ acceptance _ he’d fought for from his father. “And no.”

“Never been hungry or cold apart from the Vale.”

“Never.” Tyrion acknowledged. 

Silence lapsed again and they went through two more doors. They found the storeroom and exchanged their candles for torches. Bronn found a sack, put a few more torches into it for good measure, and out they went into the corridors. It was Bronn who broke the silence.

“Yer Uncle is a good man.”

“He is. Not very original, but solid. He does what’s right.”

“Unless Lord Tywin says otherwise.”

“Bronn, you’ve a gods-given talent for hearing what one does  _ not _ say.”

“Essential skill for keeping your skin in one piece in this business, Imp. Going to tell me what we’re doing  _ now _ or are we going to keep gettin’ to know each other? ‘Cause I got to tell you, if yer still on the lookout for a wife, I ain’t your type but I can work with it for the right price.”

Tyrion couldn’t help a real snort of laughter at that, and when he calmed down he had an answer. They’d gone down winding stairs, they’d passed more doors, and finally slipped into a side chamber few knew of. A stone platform projected into an echoing cavern and waves noisily crashed up to nearly the top steps. Bronn stepped backwards and swore when they went out the door.

“The storm must be nearly spent.” Tyrion pointed to the receding water marks on the walls. “It’s high tide now but the water’s gone down quite a bit, so the storm surge is played out.”

“Ain’t that just nice?  _ What _ are we doing here?:

“Never met a smuggler in the broad daylight, Bronn?”

“It ain’t daylight if you’re underground!”

Tyrion Lannister grinned.

  
  


* * *

 

 

“Ser Kevan?”

Exhausted, but hopeful, Kevan turned away from his staring. The storm had passed and Casterly Rock’s walls were clear, so Ser Kevan Lannister stood upon them to survey the damage that he could see. The Rock stood, as always, undamaged, unchanged, and undaunted by the storms. There were a few areas in the rather meager gardens atop Casterly Rock where some replanting needed to be done and servants were bailing out a few low areas that had flooded, but it was of no concern to them.

Lannisport, to his pleasure, also looked as though it wasn’t much affected. They were distant enough, and his eyes old enough, that he knew he missed a great deal of detail, but he didn’t see much in the way of wooden buildings - the few there were - blown down. He’d already had a raven from the head of House Lannister of Lannisport and he relayed that there had been flooding in some of the dockside areas and lower areas, but that the dikes and walls held well. The damage was less than to be expected for such a storm.

“Yes, Maester Throm?”

“Prince Joffrey has barred himself into his room again.”

Kevan closed his eyes and breathed out.

“I had thought I requested that the bar across his door be removed when the lock was removed a moon ago.”

“You did, and it was.” The young man offered hastily. “However, it appears he’s taken apart the table in his room and managed to construct a barrier that way.”

“I see.” 

Kevan thought about this. In a way, it was almost encouraging. The Prince was accompanied at all times by two guards handpicked by Kevan for absolute loyalty to himself. The knights who hoary old veterans of the Rebellion and other conflicts and were not easily daunted. Especially not by a spoiled boy-prince it was well-known was out of favor with his father and the people. For Joffrey to have barred the door so he must have actually  _ planned and executed _ the act over some time, including taking the table apart quietly. A pity he’d put that effort into fighting against his last chance rather than embracing it. The boy  _ was _ family.

“Do nothing.”

“Nothing, Ser Kevan?”

“Tell the knights that my orders are that they not respond to his demands. Remind him when his mealtimes are and that they are  _ strictly _ to be served in the Great Hall with the rest of the company and squires fostered with House Lannister.” Kevan was nothing if not practical. “He will come out when he’s hungry and we shall not give him the fight he desires.”

“Yes, ser. There is another matter that could require your attention?”

Kevan gestured for the young maester to go on and, chain’s clinking, they both turned to walk back into the nearest door leading to the castle proper.

“Guildmaster Tollen has requested a formal audience.”

“Ah, he’s here then?” 

Kevan had known no little frustration in the last year in not being able to give the Guild the answers it wanted in regards to winter preparations and figures. The Citadel held firm on refusing to release anything until the White Ravens went out, but there were other indications that could be sought out of Winter’s potential length and when it was encroaching. Dockmasters on both coasts kept tidal figures, which tended to shift slightly with the change of seasons, and reports of different fish running, the movement of whale pods, and other indications were gathered publicly. 

There was some indication that the seasons would turn soon. When that happened it would be time to open the Winter Fund and begin purchasing in grain from abroad, along with root vegetables, cabbage seed, and other hardy stock that could be grown in colder weather in small patches here and there for the smallfolk. Herds needed to be culled, meat salted and preserved. There was work to do and the more warning, the better, given the harsh, rocky soil of the Westerlands.

The problem was that the Plague had disrupted trade and shipping. They didn’t have the full figures and reports they often did. Then, beyond that, Tywin had ordered Kevan to wait until he could handle the matter personally. For Kevan, that was the final word on matters.

Despite the awkwardness with the Guild that had been caused by the long delay and Tywin’s continued insistence that he would handle matters himself, Kevan usually enjoyed his dealings with the Westerlands Miner’s Guild. The men were workers, but also soldiers. He’d fought beside them in the War of Ninepenny Kings as a young man, and again during Robert’s Rebellion, and then the Greyjoy Rebellion. Like Kevan himself, they kept their word and were plainspoken, and it helped that the ancient oaths binding the Guild to his House were so clear-cut and well-known from the cradle. Kevan had felt awkward in his recent dealings with them, but never unbalanced or walking into the unknown as he often did when dealing with the unfathomable workings of his great-nephew’s mind. That was what made Maester Throm’s response so surprising.

“No, Master Tollen merely wished me to pass on that in a moon’s time he would be arriving with a group of ten men. Other guild master from more local groups, I think? They would be meeting you then.”

Kevan stopped where he was, hand resting upon the heavy iron ring that served as a handle to the outer door. Turning, he looked at the young man in shock. Maester Throm looked up at him placidly, apparently relieved that he would not have to directly confront the Crown Prince. He obviously thought nothing of what he’d said, and Kevan decided he had misheard it.

“What precisely did Master Tollen say?”

“I have his letter here, actually.” 

Kevan held out his hand for the letter produced from one voluminous gray sleeve. It was plain, as usual for a Guild communication. A single piece of low-quality parchment with gray wax holding it shut. The wax sealing it was pressed closed with the imprint of a finger, as was traditional for the Guild. They did not use seals as noble families did. Inside was a short note, polite and to the point, written in the plain, small, script of the Guildmaster himself. The writing itself was perfectly straight, the lines indented into the page to write with all the precision expected of the engineer who had flooded Castamere as a young man.

 

_ With Greetings from the Miners of the Westerlands, _

 

_ As per tradition and our oaths it is the intention of the Westerlands Miners’ Guild to alert Ser Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Shield of Lannisport, Warden of the West, and Friend of the Guild that a full audit of the Winter Fund has been ordered by public vote held by Guild leadership. If Lord Tywin is not available, I would make it known to his brother, Ser Kevan Lannister, that we plan to begin this audit in seventy days time.  _

_ At that time a Delegation of Ten featuring myself, Guildmaster Tollen Hillson, as well as nine local District Guild Masters and attendant guards and accountants will present themselves at the Rock to begin with this task. Bread and Salt is requested for the duration of this task, in accordance with custom. Guards, servants, and all other needs shall be paid for and attended to by Guild personnel. Nor need the Lord of Casterly Rock worry that the Guild will suffer any reduction in efficiency as lots have been drawn for the replacements of those involved in the audit, who will retire from their positions thereafter, with their duly elected fellows acting in their place during the time of the audit as well as after. _

_ It is the request of the Guild that the Casterly Rock copy of the Winter Fund Ledger be made fully available to us. We honor the long history of friendship between the Guild and House Lannister in our audit and encourage full disclosure and participation by any of your great and honored house in the matter. _

 

_ With Honor and Respect, _

_ Guild Master Tollen and the Miners of the Westerlands _

Kevan Lannister read the letter twice and with care before he refolded it and placed it within the burnished red leather of his jerkin. Standing beside him, Master Throm continued to smile blandly at him, the young man’s expression open and relaxed. Kevan thanked him for his work and sent him on his way. Throm was not a Westerman by birth. He knew little of the Guild, and Kevan suddenly found himself grateful for the man’s youth and foreign origins. As if by a passing thought only, he asked if the third and fourth ravens for King’s Landing remained in the ravenry.

“I sent the third off with a lady from Lady Genna to Ser Jaime, but the fourth remains, Ser Kevan.”

“Good, please hold it for me, Maester Throm.”

Though his expression remained placid and stoic, Kevan Lannister’s heart was pounding. Oddly enough, his mind was thrown yet again to thoughts of his father. For twenty-three miserable years his father had feebly “reigned” over the Westerlands. His rule was plagued by mockery, banditry, uprisings, and shame for House Lannister. In all that time Kevan could recall how  _ carefully _ the Guild had acted so not to overstep its rightful restrictions and boundaries. 

Guildmasters had  _ offered _ help in dealing with banditry. They’d  _ suggested _ that they could assist in the collection of debts. Always gently done and kindly, for they had liked their laughing, gentle, Lord and did not wish to add to the insult. Kevan had always appreciated this respect and how it was given when no other was. When Tywin had taken the reigns, following the War of Ninepenny Kings, the Guild had been waiting and  _ eager _ to deal with the unrest. The miners and other smallfolk wanted peace, and they’d work to deliver it in noble blood willingly enough, but the Guild would _ not _ violate its oaths to the Lord of the Rock. 

Tywin had overruled their father, who had done what he was required; agreed that the Guild should follow his heir’s orders as if they were his own. That had been, for Kevan, one of his proudest moments. It had been  _ inspiring _ to watch as the perfect formations, those squares of hardened miners who walked out of their small homes and up out of shafts in their boiled leather armor over their good plain mail, short-swords strapped to their waist, plain helms upon their head, and stabbing spears in their hands. 

The sight of those plain men of the Westerlands who were the  _ backbone _ of their people coming at Tywin’s call and changing brown and gray tunics and capes for red, forming up around their household knights and going off to war had been a near heavenly sign. Or, rather, at the time Kevan had thought it such. A blessing on Tywin’s reign, which essentially began that very day. After all, if you had the Guild, you had the West. Everyone knew it was so.

For twenty-three years of terrible rulership the Guild had never audited Tytos Lannister. They’d trusted him to guard the Winter Fund that would keep so many of their people safe and fed in Winter. Kevan, for all Tywin’s trust in him, had never even seen the immense bronze, iron, and steel door to those great vaults  _ open _ . Guarded at all times by the family’s most trusted knights, and with the combination of the locks changed every winter and known only to the Lord of the Rock and a few key figures in the Guild, the Winter Fund was inviolate. 

For thirty-one years Tywin Lannister had provided good rulership for the people of the West. More than that, he had been the bedrock that had kept the Iron Throne stable for nearly as long. It had been Tywin who had provided the gold to pay of Jaehaerys II’s debts to the Iron Bank, for which Aerys II had never repaid them. It had been Tywin who led Westeros as Aerys grew weaker as a king and his mind grew more and more diseased. Then, when Robert Baratheon had run his rebellion, it had been Kevan’s brother who allied with the young man, securing his power further at the expense of their family’s reputation. He’d offered the man his only daughter and a fabulous dowry. He had then gone on and, even though passed over for the position of Hand of the King, spent  _ years _ and who knew how much gold to keep the man’s reign afloat. All of this while also rebuilding Lannisport and their fleet after it was destroyed by the damned Ironborn!

Kevan couldn’t understand it. Why would they audit the Winter Fund now? His brother’s reign was not unstable. He was known for scrupulously honoring his deals. Yes, the Sack had been a black mark against them all. Kevan was a good enough man to hate its execution and wondered, sometimes, if the Seven would judge them all harshly for it. This, however, seemed totally random to him. Why would the Guild act so?

Still, Kevan knew the law. He knew the rights of his family and his brother and he knew the rights of the Guild. If the Miners’ Guild had chosen to run an audit of the Winter Fund, it was an insult to his brother’s honor that left Kevan furious, but there was no precedent to refuse it. It was the Guild’s money, after all, and to try to interfere would leave  _ them _ in violation of their family’s oaths to the Guild. Shaking his head, Kevan went to write his brother immediately of matters, enclosing the original letter so his brother could see it himself. It was not a matter for Kevan to decide. Such things were the Lord of the Rock’s prerogative and it was but his duty to carry out his brother’s orders.

As Kevan stood in the ravenry, securing the letter himself, he was not sure why… but he could hear his father’s laughter again. Ringing out in his head, joyful, but strangely ominous, Ser Kevan Lannister sighed and pushed the thought from his head as he watched the raven wing away into now-clear skies. His father was long-dead and his brother was his lord. 

Tywin would know what to do.

 

* * *

 

“That smuggler of yours ever gonna’ make it here, Imp?”

“I noticed, Bronn, that you ceased addressing me by ‘m’lord’ some time ago.”

The sellsword shrugged, but in a fairly good natured way. Tyrion had had a wine skin beneath his cloak and had produced it after the first three-quarters of an hour of their wait had passed. He’d drunk less of it than he intended, and Bronn more, but the man had the iron constitution of stone-cold bastard he was. Tyrion wasn’t afraid his bodyguard would end up uselessly drunk from two thirds of a single wineskin.

“You miss it  _ m’lord _ .”

“Not particularly.”

Silence fell for a bit and, after a while, Bronn spoke into the gap. The tide was going out and waves were lapping around their feet as they sat on the ledge. Both had taken their boots off, and while the water was cold and salty it was also pleasant.

“Why’d you ask me what it’s like to be an orphan?”

“Because I was curious as to your answer.”

“No, I mean why’d you feel the  _ need _ ?” Bronn pressed on, pausing slightly as if considering whether his words would overstep. A rare event that drew Tyrion to look at the taller man before Bronn carried on. “Lord Tywin’s alive, I’ll give you that, but with you it’s not much difference one way or another. If you take my meaning…”

“Oh, no, I can only imagine I’d have had a  _ far _ different life were my father dead.” Tyrion scoffed.

“Ah, wonderin’ about  _ that _ , then?”

Tyrion reached down and let one of the wavelets brushing their calves wash over his hand. 

“Have you ever thought of how hard it is to define something? Take water, for instance.”

“Water’s water, last time I checked.”

“Ah, but think on it. Salt water isn’t going to quench your thirst; it’s more likely to kill you in large amounts. Foul water will do the same.”

“Drank nasty water most of my life an I’m still here. Look, what do you say we quit with the weird shite and you just tell me what this smuggler’s got to say that you want to hear and why.”

“We call wine  _ ‘the water of life’ _ but it’s not water.”

“We call taking a piss  _ ‘making water’ _ , but I don’t advice you to drink that, m’lord.” Bronn snorted and looked at him. “Ye’ve got a maester for philosophy. You haven’t forgot I’m an illiterate paid killer, have ye? Also,  _ what’s _ with the smuggler and yer need to talk to ‘im?”

“He’s the man that the steward handed Tysha off to after she was -  _ after _ .” Tyrion stood up, seeing a silhouette against the low entrance to the cove. “How providential; here he is.”

The man was in a single, small rowboat and holding a paddle in his hand. Tyrion could see he was drenched and felt his lips turn up. He’d paid a pretty sum to have the man arrive here, thinking he was summoned by another. It would be curious to see how he reacted to see the Imp of the Rock standing before him.

Some part of Tyrion had been hoping the man would cower. Another part wanted to see him attack. He was old, in his fifties, and lean and thin and small. His dark hair and the cut of his nose suggested he had Ironborn blood, but given how the Ironborn raped along the western coasts that wasn’t actually that rare. He wore standard clothing such as any of the fisherfolk would have worn, and his eyes were a dark, muddy green barely discernible in the torchlight. To Tyrion’s disappointment, he just looked curious when he saw Tyrion standing there.

Bronn helped pull the small boat up on the ledge and the man bowed awkwardly.

“M’lord, how may I serve you? I heard there was a job needed doing and gold for it?”

“There is, though I’m looking for information, not transport.” 

“I have some of that as well.” The man offered him a nod and a wary smile and Tyrion felt his temperature spike, his own teeth shining in the torchlight as he smiled.

“Then pray, tell me where you took a woman by the name of Tysha, a, when the steward of Casterly Rock handed her over to you and ordered you to dispose of her with the Ironborn.”

The man froze utterly and Tyrion noticed that, beneath his cloak and hidden by the fall of his tunic, he was wearing a long, wickedly hooked, knife. The chain wrapped around his hips as a belt was also weighted and could easily be a weapon. As the expression of harmless geniality fell away to reveal a face as hard and as unreadable as Bronn’s Tyrion noted that it was far more satisfactory to face an evil that didn’t hide itself from you and smiled more widely.

“Twelve years past is a long time to start caring about a woman you branded a whore and tossed to your guards, Lord Tyrion.” The man didn’t flinch, fixing his gaze on him. “Are you going to ask me about the washerwoman whose babes your sister drowned next?”

“That depends, did you sell her into slavery as well?”

The man looked at him for a long moment, then snorted.

“I don’t suppose you can do anything to either of them now.” The man shrugged and looked over at Bronn and the naked steel already in his hand and then turned his head and spat. “And if you’re going to kill me, m’lord, I can at least have the privilege of telling a Lannister of the Rock to go fuck himself. I left that poor little girl you called your  _ wife _ down with a Septon in Planky Town, in Dorne where no Lannister’s ever walking long and living, if you take my meaning. That poor washer-girl died of the beating she took two days out to sea.”

“She’s  _ alive _ ?”

“Was when I left her with the septon.”

Tyrion stared in shock, his stomach twisting. For the first time since he’d heard Tysha’s screams, the screams for mercy, he heard someone call her  _ his wife _ . Bronn cleared his throat after a moment.

“Not that this ain’t riveting, but does someone need killing or not?”

“No.” Tyrion croaked, shook his head and raised his hands. “No, I wanted the truth. I got it. Captain, take your hand off the knife. I offered you gold for information, I’ll pay it. She told you she was my wife?”

“Weren’t she?” The smuggler glared, but slowly lowered his hand. “I’ve seen innocents busted up in my day. I know how poor girls end up in brothels, but that one had never seen rough handling before that day. I could barely get her to  _ eat _ . I’ve cleaned up after enough Ironborn raids and seen enough slaves broken down to know what that is. Why the fuck did you  _ do that _ ? Why pretend to wed her?”

Words raced through Tyrion’s mind, but none came to his tongue. A gray-eyed specter floated before him. His darkest memories and ghosts made real. He shook his head and tried to grasp back at the calm, cold, part of his mind he’d allowed to lead him by the hand to arranging this. It was  _ that _ part of him that had woken up after he talked to Jaime and his brother’s refusal to speak had lit a fire beneath his anger and confusion. It was the part of him that had tracked down the old woodcutter, the one who was lame and blind in his farmer goodson’s care now and who’d told him that Tysha was just what she’d said; a poor crofter’s daughter. That part of him that had led a silent investigation under his very uncle and aunt’s noses while playing the useless drunk.

Now, however, that part of him was beyond his reach. All that was left was a terrible sick feeling. The dread of never knowing had become the dread of  _ understanding _ .

“I didn’t. I wed her and kept her in a cottage and did her no harm.”

The smuggler stared at him and Tyrion blurted out what he’d never even given in confession to a septon.

“My father found out.”

The smuggler looked on him for a long moment, then spoke with a voice laden with wariness.

“He offer you something or threaten you?”

“Both, neither.” Tyrion replied, his breathing quick and shallow. “He said she was a whore. My brother said he’d hired her for me…”

“My mother sold my ass for wine money fore I ran away to a ship.” The smuggler’s reply was scathing before silence fell.

For a long moment the three men just stood. Tyrion stared into the dark water, his face reflecting back at him. As the tiny waves bent the image he would appear even more deformed and ugly in one moment. Then, as the surface of the water bent again beneath the torchlight it would twist into a new shape. For an instant the water bowed and his jaw stretched down. His nose lengthened, and he stared at a handsome face. One very much the same as his brothers, save for the dead, lost eyes staring back at him. The man he might have been, had he been born more than half-a-man torn from a dead mother stared back at him with damning eyes and something inside him flared even as the cold part of him took over.

Black iron, after all, could still burn you.

“Here,” Tyrion tossed a small sack of gold at smuggler, who warily caught it. “Go back to your ship, collect your cargo and be gone by morning. I strongly suggest you don’t return for some moons.”

“Summer Isles are nice this time of year.” The man weighed the sack, tucked it away beneath his cloak, and climbed into his boat still facing them.

He didn’t ask them any more questions. He didn’t show any more anger or bravado. The smuggler just left them alone, in the dark, holding their torches out against the shadows that circled them as the water reflected golden and red spark in every direction.

“What now?”

“Now we go get very drunk.” Tyrion replied with real feeling and Bronn looked at him with both approval and suspicion.

“I’m not going to have to call the maester to make you spew up your guts again, am I?”

“Possibly, but you won’t have to pay this one!”

Bronn let out an oath and followed Tyrion on his way back towards the tunnels. Tyrion, however, bent his mind towards other tasks. An accounting had to be made for what had been done to  _ her _ . To do that, he had places to go, and people to see. Uncle Kevan was most accommodating, and with some maneuvering a task would be found outside the Rock. From there, horses and coin would easily get him to King’s Landing.

A Lannister always paid their debts, and Tyrion had a lifetime to collection on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General Series Updates:
> 
> I am not dead! Let me begin by apologizing for how long this has sat without any work being done on it. I work in a public high school and work has been very tough this past year. Also, I just switched doctors and this one ran my bloodwork and it appears I am severely anemic. Like nearly "get a transfusion" anemic. I'm on iron supplements now and a new diet and hope that will help with the exhaustion I've been fighting.
> 
> This is the last chapter of Wandering Sons. The next story in the fic, Heir to the Telling Senses, should pick up where we all want it to - with Lyarra and Oberyn in Dorne. THAT is delayed because the choice to make Varys a good-guy and not the big bad means I had to rearrange the entire storyline. That has left me with serious problems in pacing, BUT I have some hopes I may bet in good order soon and begin to start writing. However, I'm about to have a solid month of standardized testing at work to wrangle and then graduation to manage which comes with several time consuming responsibilities as far as large craft projects go.
> 
> As such, I probably won't get Heir's first chapter out until sometime this summer. I'm not sure when and I cannot make any promises between work, health, and getting the new story line ironed out. I do, however, want to thank everyone for reading and for your wonderful comments. If I don't respond it is not because I do not care or appreciate your comments. It's merely because of being overwhelmed both by the wonderful response and other things in my life. Thank you for reading and I appreciate your kindness and hope you enjoy this chapter.


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